The Art of Losing
by Connor Xfor
Summary: Reach is falling, the Covenant are closing in, Humanity is fighting for its life. Among the rubble of the city of Manassas, an ONI attaché is fighting to get off-world in one piece. What she knows could change the war, and the Office of Naval Intelligence will stop at nothing short of dispatching a Spartan-II team to retrieve her.
1. Chapter 1

**Doctor Salvia Martinez, Chief ONI Engineering Officer attached to Project INFINITY, ONI Command Facility 'KNOX', Reach, Epsilon Eridani System, July 24** **th** **2552**

"The Art of losing isn't hard to master,

So many things seem filled,

With the intent to be lost,

That their loss is no disaster."

She spoke, painfully aware that one wrong word in this lion's den could very well be her last. Her senior advisors had practically ordered her to keep literary flourishes and extravagances to an absolute minimum when reporting to the Office of Naval Intelligence's High Council. The five senior officers in the darkened room were arguably the most powerful individuals in the UNSC, and she feared they might not appreciate 600-year-old poetry being spouted by some jumped-up civilian contractor in an important briefing.

"The Human race has had a steep learning curve in the last three decades. We've lost time and time again, countless colony worlds reduced to glass by the Covenant. You could say that the UNSC has almost forgotten how to win military engagements." She rattled on, hoping that her reveal would outweigh the overly dramatic build-up.

She shot a glance to Admiral Walker, who responded with an almost imperceptible wink, letting her know that he was there to support her. It was the part of ONI which Walker presided over, Section Three, which had approached her about this project 5 years ago. She'd been a senior Engineering Officer at the Reyes-McLees shipbuilding yards in orbit around Mars and had personally overseen the construction of four of the Navy's powerhouse Marathon-Class Heavy cruisers. The stress of the mammoth task had damn near killed her, and it was in the wake of the last hull, the UNSC _Timid_ , having been formally commissioned into service, that the black-uniformed ONI agent had approached her in a bar in New Austin.

At first, she had thought that the woman was flirting with her, talking about "going to the stars" and "fantastic opportunity". It was only when the operative had started bringing up her personnel files from Reyes-McLees Industries that she'd taken her seriously. The offer of a 4-figure upfront payment, 6-figure salary and the prospect of heading up the greatest engineering project of the 26th century sealed her fate, and the next day she was on an ONI prowler heading for the Oort cloud on the edges of the Solar system.

She'd spent the next five years living and working on the UNSC shipbuilding superstation _Hephaestus_ in the employ of ONI Section 3, reporting periodically to Admiral Walker as to the progress of Project Infinity. It'd been a struggle at times. She'd had to be referred to ONI psychiatrists to help her frequent insomnia. However, now she was about to reveal Infinity to the other Section heads, and she was close to passing out.

"However, now it is time to show what Humanity can do, to regain the offensive capability we so dearly lack, to take the fight to alien shores, and prevent our inevitable annihilation." She said. "Admirals, please feast your eyes on the first ship in the Infinity-class. The key to our salvation."

She unlocked the files on her datapad and sent them to the devices In front of the Officers. On the screens, a 3D model of a warship appeared, with a barrage of information displayed next to it, outlining capabilities, specifications, crew, everything the Admirals would want to know about the enormous vessel.

The table was silent for a good few minutes, with three out of five Officers deeply engrossed in the material, occasionally raising their eyebrows or coughing. Admiral Walker sat silently, looking more at his fellow Section heads than the data before him, and Admiral Parangosky simply stared at her, her face fixed in an expressionless slate. From what she'd heard, this not-display of emotion was the best she could hope for from the CINCONI.

It was the Section Zero chief, Admiral Korobi, who eventually broke the silence. "So this is where all of our budgets have been going. Is she ready to launch?" He looked up at her, his dark complexion almost invisible in the deliberately dark lighting of the room.

"Yes sir, in theory. The Shipbuilding AI Aine is a little apprehensive, but all her systems are ready to go. She just needs a crew." She responded, highlighting the relevant data on their screens.

Admiral Sera was next. She looked up from the pad, smiling wryly. "How the hell have you kept this a secret for so long Martin?"

Walker coughed "Total communications black out from within the Oort cloud system, all contractors locked down for 5 years, like the good Doctor here."

Admiral Parangosky raised her hand slightly, drawing instant silence. She spoke in a voice that simultaneously matched her frail appearance and betrayed her wicked intellect, cool and composed on the surface with sinister undercurrents. "I've kept the right people in Fleet informed. Infinity will be a game-changer, capable of decimating even the most powerful covenant ships. Doctor Martinez, you have done exceptional work, and I will personally assure that it is rewarded accordingly. However, your involvement with Project Infinity is not over."

Salvia frowned slightly, before composing herself and nodding.

" _Infinity_ is just the first of many. Your work on INF-101 is complete, she'll enter active service within three years, and make more difference to the war than you'll ever know. Now work starts on INF-102."

She fought for control over her emotions. One side of her wanted to run out of that room and never look back. Infinity would always be her greatest achievement, but it had taken so much of her, she wondered if she could take another one. The other side of her wanted to jump right back in. She knew that from the second-in-class ships and onwards, things became a lot easier. Maybe she could complete this new ship with her health intact. The overall feeling was one of excitement, raw passion and an almost arrogant desire for a challenge. It was her biggest downfall, her almost obsessive need to throw herself into her work. And what better work could she do?

After a few brief seconds, she nodded, breathing steadily. "Yes ma'am. When do I start?"

Parangosky's mouth twitched, the ghost of a smile. "You start in September. UNSC Engineering still has to clear up the shipyard from _Infinity_. Once they're done, work on INF-102 will commence. Admiral Walker will brief you tomorrow. If that's all, I think we're done here."

She cleared her throat. "There is one thing Admiral."

Walker shot her a ' _What the hell do you think you're doing?'_ look, but she continued, fully aware that if this went south she could commit career suicide, or it'd be made to look like she'd done so literally.

The CINCONI said nothing, so she carried on. "If I could, I'd like to put forward a potential name for INF-102."

Parangosky nodded "By all means Doctor, I think you've earned that right."

At this point, it was clear that the other Admirals had lost interest. Only Walker and Parangosky looked at her expectantly.

" _Renovatio_ " She said calmly, the Latin slipping smoothly from her tongue. The word had a special meaning to her, not one she was liable to divulge to the room, but she hoped the word itself would be poignant enough to have a chance.

There was another few seconds of silence, then Parangosky nodded "Renovatio. Fitting." She waved her hand, and the meeting was disbanded, the Section heads standing and leaving the darkened room without another word. No one would ever know that they were there. Walker winked at her as he passed, motioning her to wait behind with him.

Once the others had left, he cracked a smile. "Well done Salvia. I can't believe how quickly that went." He rubbed his silver hair absent-mindedly. "I've never been in a High Council meeting that lasted less than an hour." He collected himself, straightening his dress uniform. "Anyway, looks like it's time for some much needed R&R for you Doctor, you'll be back to the grindstone in no time."

She smiled as they began walking towards the doors out of the Dark Room "I could live with some time off. Know any good restaurants in Manassas?"

Walker shook his head "I'm not local, but I've heard good things about a place on 5th street. Hungarian-India fusion or something."

She snorted "Sounds like Gastrointestinal Armageddon if you ask me." As they passed through the doors, they slipped back into official mode. Formal speech, no joking about. She'd formed a close working relationship with the Admiral, and it never hurt to have their boundaries reinforced by formalities, remind them of who they were. Admiral Parangosky was waiting immediately outside.

Walker quickly snapped to attention, and the elderly woman waved him on, locking eyes with Salvia. As the Admiral walked away, she felt more fear than when one of infinity's primary fusion drives had had a near-meltdown back in '49.

"Relax. I'm just here to formally assign you to Project RENOVATIO, congratulations Doctor." She said before handing her a datapad and hobbling away down the corridor. She looked at the screen, noticing formal relocation orders to a remote system. The whole operation was being moved to the system, another ONI secrecy technique? Or did Parangosky know something the rest of them didn't? Almost certainly.

 **13:50, August 15** **th** **, 2552, City of Manassas, Alfold State, Ütközet Province, Reach**

"Doctor, we've got to get you out of here." Came Walker's voice over her chatter. "The Covenant are on Reach, all mobile naval assets are being evacuated ASAP."

Her heart sank into a pit of dread in her chest. She'd known this was inevitable. That they'd find the UNSC's largest and best defended colony, and burn it to ashes. Even the prospect of the second-largest Naval Fleet in the galaxy, or the array of 20 super-heavy Orbital Defence Platforms didn't change the fact that Reach was doomed.

"Where and when?" She demanded. She had been in the middle of her lunch, but her omelette now lay abandoned as she stood up from her seat, swiping her credit chip on the reader at her table to pay for the disappointing meal. The café she'd chosen was on the historical Baja Square in the centre of Manassas. The buildings around her were not the imposing skyscrapers of the city's financial districts, but low level shops, restaurants and boutiques scattered around the pedestrian precinct. People went about their daily lives, tired-looking parents dragged their children from shop to shop, teenagers loitered along the fringes of the square, and pigeons congregated in the space, their incessant cooing echoing around the marble steps and tiling. A water feature bubbled happily in the centre of the area, and it was next to this where she stood awaiting Walker's response.

"I need you to get to Tolna Tower, on the 15th floor there'll be an evac bird waiting for you. Salvia, this is serious. The Army's saying that they can't hold back the Covenant ground forces for much longer, they're going to issue a city-wide evacuation order in thirty minutes. You have until then to get to the tower before all hell breaks loose." He spoke clearly, disguising the panic in his voice well, but not completely.

"How the hell did the covenant get here without alerting the Navy?" She demanded, pushing past a crowd of shoppers, drawing stares and murmurs of disapproval.

"Section 1 hypothesise that their flagship used the recent meteor shower to slip in while cloaked, deployed an army of infantry and hunkered down under a camouflage canopy. They've only got one ship planetside at the moment, but it's a big one. CSO-class Supercarrier. Thing's 30km long, and now the camouflage generators have been disabled, they're out in the open. I heard about some Special Forces project to disable her, but nothing coming through yet." He informed her as she entered the directory, styled to look like a 20th century phone booth.

"Hang on Admiral, just getting directions." She said, and muted his feed on her chatter, quickly synching to the directory and finding the quickest route to the tower. By foot it would be 45 minutes, but if she caught a cab it would be 15 at most. She cued up their call on her chatter, the terrifying reality of the situation now sinking in, causing her to shake slightly. "Okay, I'll get a cab to the tower, what's the Army saying?"

He sighed heavily down the line "Not much at this point, which is worrying, if we assume 100% casualty rate, it'll be about 20 minutes until the city's hit. They're reinforcing the city's garrison with troops from Fort Witherson, but the 352nd Marine Division is on evac duty, touch-down in 15 minutes. Move it Doctor, and you may just ride the wave of destruction out of this place. Tolna Tower, top floor. The evac bird should take you right to an ONI prowler docked at Reach Station Gamma, the _Circumference_. Then it's a straight shot for Earth."

She nodded even though he couldn't see her, breathing steadily to calm herself. "Alright Admiral, see you aboard the _Circumference_ , Martinez out." She terminated the call and hailed a green-painted taxi, getting in quickly.

"Tolna Tower." She said to the driver, who turned around in his seat to face her, his eyebrows raised. She realised that in her black ONI dress uniform that she must look a little odd. Military uniform was never in fashionable circles anyway, but Reach was the centre of clothing and fashion within the colony worlds. "Get there in ten minutes and I'll make it worth your while."

At the promise of money, the driver nodded once and sped away from the curb, driving at breakneck speed. She took this time to think what was about to happen. Reach would fall, of that there was no doubt. It was just a matter of getting as many civilians out as possible, and taking as many of those bastards down with us.

"You're ONI." The driver said in a thick Hungarian accent, ending her brooding trance. She looked up and saw the man's beady eyes staring back at her in the mirror. "I know ONI when I see them. Only one reason why a spook overpays for a fast cab to the tallest tower in the city."

They turned down a narrow street, and she spotted the imposing tower ahead. "Important meeting."

He laughed deeply, shaking his head "I've served. 13th Marines. I know Spook Bullshit when I hear it. I also know that Fort Witherson is more active than I've seen it for years. Just tell me this. Do I have enough time to get my family?" He looked at her, eyes sad and desperate.

She didn't answer for a couple of minutes, and it was no time before the car slowed to a crawl and stopped. She swiped her credit chip, paying four times as much as was normal, money meant nothing today. She cleared her throat as she made ready to leave the car.

"Yes. Go now." She whispered, slipping out of the car and onto the pavement outside the lobby. Her cab sped away, light now firmly off. She hoped he made it out with his family, but in her heart of hearts she knew it was unlikely. She pushed through the double glass doors of the lobby and strode through the security checkpoint, scanning her ID badge as she went. There was almost no one around the brightly lit interiors, just security guards and MPs. All the soldiers clutched MA5C rifles in their hands, and looked impassive, although god knows how they actually felt. She was terrified, and she was being flown out of the danger zone, whereas these men would be flung directly into it in all likelihood.

"Ma'am." A young lieutenant stepped out from behind the security desk. He was wearing a black variant of the standard Marine BDU and he carried only his sidearm. His face was haggard and bleak, and his voice was strained and tired. "Admiral Walker told me you'd be here, your bird is en route, I'll show you the way."

She nodded and followed the soldier to the elevators. As the glass door closed behind them and the small cage ascended quickly, she was almost blinded by the sudden intense sunlight, which came through the glass walls of the elevator shaft. The city was spread out below her, the tall buildings of the financial district around her blocked most of the view for the first 30 seconds, but as the climbed the peaks of the Old Town's many churches and spires peaked into view. The Malon River flowed in between the two districts, cleanly slicing the city centre in half. Boats and hydrofoils meandered lazily along the ribbon of blue, enjoying the early afternoon sun. Such peace, serenity. Boy were they in for a shock.

"Your bird is Pelican Lima Seven Niner, patching her pilot through to your chatter." The Lieutenant said, and suddenly her ear buzzed with static, broken through at points by a distorted voice.

"Doc, you read me, doc?" Came the voice, vaguely female and with a strong aussie accent.

"Yes, I read you Lima Seven Niner." She responded a little awkwardly in front of the Lieutenant, who had elected to stare blankly at the city during her conversation.

"Good to hear from you ma'am, I'm inbound ETA 30 seconds, with a whole mess of hostile air right behind me, looks like the Air Force is going to be busy with this one!"

The Lieutenant tapped her shoulder, clearing his throat and joining the call "Pilot, Air base Farragut has dispatched Sparrowhawk and Skyhawk units. The City's initiated evacuation, the Colonial Militia is setting up defensive positions and anti-air batteries all over the city. 12th Infantry and 22nd armoured divisions are inbound." He pressed his earpiece into his ear as if trying to hear the repots better "And the UNSC _Kirkland_ has deployed its ODST contingent, they'll be dropping into the streets right about now."

As he spoke, jets of fire descended from the clouds, dozens of them, easily a hundred flaming asteroids which fell in regular patterns within the grid of roadways. "We're in this till the bitter end" The Lieutenant mumbled, fiddling with his pistol reflexively.

The long ride up to the landing pad on the top floor finally ended, and as the doors slid open, she barely had time to take in the blistering wind before her view was obstructed by the soaring nose of a Pelican Dropship as it crested the lip of the tower, performing a loop to level itself out. It was during this manoeuvre that she was able to take in the magnificent craft: at first glance it appeared to be a standard D77-TC Dropship, painted a drab olive green, the colour of all naval Pelicans. On closer inspection, it became apparent that this particular 'cart', as navy flyboys called them, had been through hell. Its rear port engine was sparking, and there were numerous scorch marks and dents to the angular metal airframe. It might have been a trick of the light, or her imagination playing tricks on her, but she could have sworn she could see the pilot grinning behind the controls.

The engines whined as the bulky ship came to a dead stop above the landing pad, and the rear door of the dropship hissed open, revealing the dropship to be full of heavily armoured Marines, who all ran out of the aircraft and across the landing pad towards the emergency stairwell on her left. Four of them carried the pieces to a mobile Anti-Air Missile Battery. She knew, because as a college graduate she'd designed the machine.

The nameless Lieutenant patted her on the back, shouting above the cacophony of the engines "This is my exit Doc, these guys'll need to know where to go. Good luck. God knows I'm envious of you getting out of here."

She turned to face him, and offered her hand, which he shook quickly. "You'll get out of here too, Lieutenant…" She suddenly realised that she hadn't asked his name.

"Haverson. Elias Haverson. ONI Section One." He said with a muted smile. "Get off-planet. Go. Whoever you are, you're clearly a lot more important in this war than I."

And with that, he was gone. She turned to face the rear of the dropship, jogging over and hauling herself inside. There was a worrying amount of dried blood on the floor of the crew compartment. She now knew why Marines called it the 'blood tray'. She walked towards the cockpit door, banging on it once with her fist. The metal slab retracted into the wall, and she took her place next to the grinning pilot. She donned a flight helmet and synchronised to the Pelican's systems before shaking hands with her Pilot.

"Doctor Salvia Martinez, ONI Section Three attaché"

"Staff Sergeant Lisa Monroe, but most call me 'Bird'" The pilot replied, smiling and manually checking the instruments. "We'll be off in no time Doc, just gotta get our escort arranged. Whoever you are, you turn a lot of heads, they're vectoring two Broadswords to escort us to Station Gamma. Most I normally get is a couple of Hornets."

"How does it look out there?" She asked, straight to the point, the pilot's smile slipped slightly before replying.

"The Army's holding its own out there, but there's just too many of them. So far they've kept the covvies within the Viery Territory, but once Manassas falls, the next town is the crossing into the next province. I just thank our lucky stars that their orbital support isn't directly intervening. Plus, a buddy of mine says that Spartans are planning to take it out."

"Take what out?"

Bird shook her head and rolled her eyes. "Oh, just the bloody great big Supercarrier in low orbit. It's not done much yet, just nailed a frigate or two. I reckon they must be looking for something, otherwise they'd just glass the place and move on."

Salvia remained quiet, not sure what rumours she'd heard in the ONI grapevine were appropriate to reveal. In reality, uttering any one of them could get her killed, and there was always paranoia about Section Zero planting false info within other Sections to see who was blabbing.

"Righto Doc, escort's ready, off we fuck." Bird drawled, pushing thrust up enough to nose them gently off of the deck.

Several things happened in that next brief moment. The most jarring of all these was the brilliant flash of white light in the sky. It was only a pinprick, but it was bright enough to outshine Epsilon Eridani. What she didn't know at the time was that the singularly bright spec of Reach's sky was in fact the very same CSO-class Supercarrier being sent to oblivion by an overloaded Slip Space Drive, at the cost of UNSC _Savannah_ and necessitating the sacrifice of a Spartan-II Supersoldier.

The next thing to register on her senses were the radar pings of two Broadsword Strike Fighters, one on either side of their flight path. They flooded her helmet with radio chatter but in that moment both she and Bird were too distracted, staring quizzically at the supernova of light on the horizon. Had they been listening, they would've heard the two pilots warning them of incoming Banshee fliers: the third and final 'thing' to happen.

Far, far too late, Bird jerked the joystick hard left, initiating a steep bank down the side of the tower. But she was too slow, and the lead Banshee's green energy cannon round struck the dropship directly on the rear left engine. The explosion flung both women around in their seats and added an almost uncontrollable spin to their movement. As they pulled away from the top of the tower and plummeted downwards, a single Scorpion Air-to-Air missile struck the lead banshee, ripping the alien machine to pieces.

While normally the destruction of a Banshee would be cause for celebration, in this particular case the aftermath of said destruction turned out to be rather… destructive. The largest lump of the metal aircraft continued on its path due to its incredible velocity right into the falling dropship, colliding with such force that it pressure welded purple metal alloy to olive grey composite.

The incredible impact knocked Salvia's head into the cabin wall, and her senses dulled. She was partially aware of the quantity of swearing and cursing by Bird next to her, and of the sickening spinning motion of the crippled dropship as it plummeted from the sky, engines screaming an awful lamenting wail. Red lights flashed all around her from various instrument panels, and screeching alarms blared, almost drowning out her own thoughts.

"Shit Doc, I can't hold her, we're going down." Bird shouted over the din, furiously wrestling with the flight controls, trying to gain some level of control. "Mayday mayday, Pelican Lima Seven Niner is hit, we're going down hard, I repeat, Pelican Lima Seven Niner is hit, I'm going to try to ditch her into the river."

There was a garbled reply, but the grating noises coming from the ruined comms system disguised the words behind them. Bird ripped off her helmet in frustration and dashed it against the dashboard. Her hands immediately flew back to the controls, pulling up to the point where Salvia could hear the metal of the stick creaking under stress.

All she could do was try not to throw up at the nauseating motion of their stricken craft and stare out of the window in terror at the rapidly approaching skyline swinging in and out of her view as they dropped.

"Doc! Brace yourself!" Bird yelled, finally giving up the ghost on controlling the dropship, assuming the commercial airline brace position by putting her head down with her fingers laced behind her head. Salvia copied her, closing her eyes and praying to the God she didn't believe in to help her. As the Ground Proximity alarm started blaring in her ears, her thoughts turned to her mother, alone in a Martian retirement community, and wondered if she'd ever see her again. Or her sisters, or nephews. Or the friends she'd met working on the _Hephaestus_. A single tear formed on her cheek as the dropship slammed into the side of a multi-storey office building with such force that her safety harness ripped itself from the framework, and she was thrown bodily around the cabin. She felt herself bounce off of three surfaces before finally coming to rest on the ceiling of the cabin. No pain registered, just a weary resignation as she slipped into the blackness eating at her vision.

 **Chief Petty Officer Jacob-209, August 16** **th** **2552, 10:50 Zulu Time, UNSC FOB WILLOW, Viery Territory, Reach**

"What's the next mission Jake?" The Spartan asked, not even looking up from her sniper rifle as she expertly disassembled it and polished it.

"Rescue Op, downtown Manassas, ONI attaché." He listed, rubbing his eyes as he slumped down onto a low bunk. The room the trio of Spartan Supersoldiers were sat in used to be the Officer's mess of this Forward Operating Base. But ever since the Covenant were found on Reach about three weeks ago, there hadn't been enough officers in the building to call it that. They had taken it over as their operations room, moved a couple of beds in and moved a full-sized holographic projection table into the centre of the space. Weapons and ammo were piled up in the corner, and one fully-equipped MJOLNIR Mobile Assembly Station was placed in the opposite corner.

"Sounds boring, we've got about ten thousand covvies to kick off our doorstep, and they're sending us in for one civilian? Seems like a gross misallocation of valuable military resources if you ask me." Sabina grunted from her bunk. She was still lying down in full armour, supposedly resting from their last Op, but Jake always knew when she was actually sleeping.

"I'm with Sab." Sara agreed, stripping her rifle again. She'd already fully cleaned the gun 4 times, but she wasn't really cleaning it, it was more of a comfort thing, a ritual to put her mind at ease. "What's so special about one ONI contractor?"

He sighed "When I asked they said it was classified. All they'd tell me is that she's worked on a Project Infinity, and that she's to be considered a Tier One Asset." He grabbed his helmet from the bedside table, trying to buff off a blackened streak with his gloved hands.

"Great, so while Noble Team is out destroying Supercarriers, we get babysitting duty?" Sara scoffed, finally placing her rifle next to her and resting her head in her hands.

"Looks that way. Don't worry, should be plenty challenging." He said, getting up and moving over to the tactical map of the town. "Until 1800 hours yesterday, Army, Marine and Air Force units were doing a pretty good job of holding back Covenant advances in the area. Until an SDV-class Heavy Corvette entered city airspace and provided direct support for advancing ground forces. As of now, the city's pretty much theirs. Some UNSC forces, including our asset, are trapped behind the advancing enemy lines, and there's not a hope in hell that any evac birds can get close, that corvette's got the air covered."

Sara and Sabina both rose from their positions as he spoke, gathering around the holographic display, complete with hovering Covenant ship. He highlighted a few key areas in the city, in the Financial district and riverside apartment complexes.

"We've observed two areas of resistance, one in the Miriam Trust Banking Tower, and another in some evacuated residential buildings." He said, and recordings of the frantic distress calls played quietly through the speakers. "At the end of the day, retrieving the ONI asset is our primary objective, but Fleet wants us to have a go at that corvette while we're at it."

Sara snorted derisively "And how the hell do they expect us to do that?"

"Shiva warhead." Sabina guessed. "Corvettes are the only covenant ships not to have energy shielding, so if you were to set off a nuke from any rooftop nearby, it would get caught in the blast."

He nodded, simulating the blast on the display. The holographic corvette buckled and crumpled, falling from its vulture-like height and crashing into the nearest highrise. "Exactly. Plus, General Tulius says that the Army has evacuated all civilians, so anything still in that city that isn't UNSC is a fair target. No collateral damage."

Sara nodded "So it sounds like we've got a game plan: find the civilian and evac her, same for the squaddies on the ground, set up the nuke, evac by road seems the most feasible way out of the city, then blow the bomb, taking out the corvette and damn near anything still in the city limits."

He chuckled "You make it sound so easy, but yeah, that's the general thing. ONI is really pushing for this asset to be extracted as they've been out of contact with their attaché for over 20 hours, so we're leaving in 10 minutes by Falcon. HALO jump, SYCAMORE chutes, gear up for urban warfare." He waved his hand through the hologram, signalling its disappearance as the other two Spartans started walking over to the makeshift armoury in the corner of the room.

He joined them in descending upon the pile of ammunition and weapons, quickly selecting and customising his equipment, starting with an MA5C Assault rifle. He slid extra magazines into various holsters and pockets on his armour, strapping extra musette bags across his shoulders. He snapped the rifle to the magnetic holster in the small of his back and retrieved his M392 DMR and its corresponding ammunition, smiling slightly at the familiar feel of the weapon in his hands.

Sabina selected her staple configuration of weaponry, an M90 Combat Shotgun as her primary with a backup Assault Rifle, and Sara too picked a familiar layout, stowing her customised SRS-99D-S2 Sniper rifle and brandishing an M7 SMG, attaching it to her thigh holster.

"Ready to go Jake" Sara announced, clamping the bulky black shape of the Sycamore Parachute system into her back. Sabina gave a thumbs up, and the trio took turns inspecting each other's rigs for any errors. Satisfied, he led his team out of the Ops Centre and out into the base.

"Helmets on, Op is live, TEAMCOM channel 7." He instructed them before they left the building, and each Spartan slid their respective helmets over their heads. He heard his neck seal hiss and his HUD become live, rapidly running system diagnostics before giving him the all clear. The other's and his Bio readings flashed in the corner of his vision, showing green across the board.

He keyed TEAMCOM, sending a single burst of static to confirm that they were good to go. He received two bursts back, accompanied by a change in the icon for the two other Spartans on his HUD.

As they marched through the busy base towards the landing pad, many heads turned their way, Marines stopped their weapon cleaning to stare at the sight of three fully-armoured Commandos striding at unnatural pace through their vision. Sometimes he hated the attention they got. It always seemed to alienate him and his team from the rest of the UNSC, that somehow because they looked different from everyone else that they weren't quite human, not on the same level as 'normal' soldiers. Weren't they all fighting for the same cause? The same enemy? Some of his fellows chose to believe that ordinary soldiers were jealous of the Spartans' supreme combat ability, some chose to hide behind the mantra that they were 'special', and were chosen by the UNSC to save the Human race, and others chose to simply not care at all, just hide behind the armour, do their job and turn a deaf ear to the mutterings of others.

Personally, he found himself in a rather unique situation of feeling jealousy towards the normal soldiers, because they could have a life, socialise, get married, have children. While he understood that the Spartans had to make sacrifices for the betterment of humanity, he couldn't help but wonder every now and then, what if?

A flashing icon on his HUD interrupted his thoughts as their transport cleared the base's air space and descended towards them, the two turboprops tilting upwards as it touched down gently onto the deck. They quickly strapped themselves in to three of the five seats in the open-air crew compartment with him facing the rear of the aircraft and the other two facing him.

"Spartans, we're taking a longer route than planned, covenant air forces are closing the gaps around the city. We'll reach the DZ and Drop height of 30,000 feet in 20 minutes." The pilot came over their communications, sounding haggard.

Jake didn't respond, sensing that this pilot wasn't exactly in a conversational mood. Of all the UNSC Defence Force, the Air Force had perhaps taken the most beating on Reach, even more so than the Army or Marines. He'd read a report on Waypoint just this morning that the 32nd Air Wing had been utterly decimated around New Alexandria, with over 90% casualty rate. The statistics really didn't do the horrors justice, but it was the only way for such a massive scale of destruction to be contextualised. It was always this way: a few hundred Marines dying to defend a school; that was a tragedy, but an entire Naval Battlegroup vanishing without a trace? That was too much melancholy and loss to be dealt with by the human mind. So you compartmentalise, bury yourselves in statistics to try and comprehend the damage.

"Jake?" Sabina's concerned, Eastern-European accented voice cut through his miasma, jerking him back to the present. "You okay?"

"Yeah." He lied, turning his head slightly. "Just tired."

"Same here" Sara muttered, the sun glinting off of the non-regulation war paint striped down either side of her Mjolnir Scout helmet. "I'd kill for some downtime right about now."

Jake scoffed "Yeah, if you could tell the covenant to kindly stop invading, then I'm sure HR will get right on that."

They lapsed into silence, watching the ground fall far below them as the Falcon made the long trip up, well above the cloud layer so that the view below them was of a sea of white. He never got bored of this view. The worst part was that in a few brief minutes he knew him and his fellows would leave the peace and serenity of this heavenly landscape and descend into the chaos and destruction hiding below the deceptively passive cloudscape.

He'd always had a reputation amongst the Spartans as being a dreamer, always drifting off when there wasn't an immediate task to perform, reading too far in classes and becoming bored when the others took too long to catch up.

"Alright Spartans, we're 3 minutes out, the city's right below us. I can't make a second run, the Corvette's already trying to get a read on us." The pilot said, and Jake keyed confirmation. The Spartans unfastened their restraints and made ready to jump, attaching their weapons to secure hard points around their armour.

The engines of the Falcon changed their pitch as they finally levelled out, and the rotors shifted from being almost entirely upright, like a simple helicopter's, to forward facing, accelerating them forwards at their designated altitude.

"We're over the Drop Zone, go, go, go!" The pilot yelled, and a red light in between the three on the ceiling turned green. Jake gave the other two a quick thumbs up before he stood up from his seat and dove out of the aircraft.

His own breathing became magnified in his helmet as he left the drone of the Falcon's engines far behind. He stretched his arms out to slow his descent slightly so that his team could catch up, flipping over onto his back. The Falcon was a mere speck in the distance now, slowly continuing its journey onwards, but his attention was focussed on the two rapidly approaching dots as they broke through the thick cloud layer, obscuring his vision for a brief moment.

"Incoming two-oh-nine!" Sara called as she punched a hole through the clouds, trailing wispy vapour and zoomed closer, slowly spiralling down towards him.

"Just try and catch me one-seventy" He laughed, allowing his arms to be pushed in front of him as he fell, accelerating more.

This carried on for the next 15,000 feet, each Spartan taking it in turns to try and chase another. It might seem childish to an outsider, but Jake knew that these were the precious moments when they could afford to let their inner children out. Once they reached 10,000 feet, he buzzed them once on TEAMCOM, and as one they flipped over on to their fronts.

The city was spread out below him, but the urban sprawl below them had been radically changed since the last SATCOM imagery. The most noticeable addition was the curved red/purple shape of the SDV-class heavy corvette dominating the airspace about 7000 feet below them. Its menacing hull cast long shadows over the Financial District's skyscrapers. Many of the buildings below showed evidence of assault, the police headquarters had been all but obliterated and the town hall was pockmarked by blackened plasma scarring. As they dropped lower, Jake could even make out the masses of Covenant Infantry and armoured support crowding the streets, milling about. From the looks of things the enemy had set up some sort of command centre in the Municipal Park, a massive domed prefabricated structure around which thousands upon thousands of troops swarmed.

The air space was busy too, Banshees, Phantoms, Spirits, even a couple of the heavily armoured Lich assault craft lumbered around above the buildings, taking the occasional pot shot at random structures. He shifted his eyes away from the centre of town and over to their designated landing zone, an abnormally tall skyscraper in the Pomaz District where the Asset's Chatter had last been detected. The district was otherwise filled with low residential buildings, interrupted only by the mega-sized ReachMart shopping centre towards the Northern end of the area and the scattering of small green areas among the familiar dull canvas of grey and beige..

As they approached the 2000 feet mark, he buzzed once more on TEAMCOM, signalling them to pull their chutes. He didn't really need to tell them, they knew the protocol for HALO jumps perfectly, but it was more for his benefit than theirs, plus, it would make sure that if one of them messed up, he wouldn't be held responsible. Cheerful.

He punched the button on the strap to his chute, and felt the sudden jerk as the canopy deployed, releasing a jet black parafoil parachute. The toggles for directional control flopped down in front of his shoulders, and he grabbed them, testing that they worked fully, which they did. He steered himself towards the landing pad on top of the building, battling with vicious cross-winds as he approached.

The metal landing pad let out a satisfying dull thump as he touched down and pushed the parachute recall button, at which the canvas was quickly pulled back into the parachute's casing. There were similar noises made as Sara and Sabina landed on either side of him, and Sabina turned to face him as her parachute retracted.

"I spotted our Asset's crashed Pelican on the way down, looks pretty embedded in the building about twelve stories down. There's a lot of fire damage to the nearby structure." She said as she shouldered her shotgun "Anyone still inside that thing is dead."

"Slow down there Captain Optimism" Sara said as Jake took the lead towards the stairway. "We'll find out when we get there."

They walked quickly down the stairs and were soon walking towards a blackened door. He tried the handle, but found that the intense heat of jet fuel had actually welded the metal of the door to the frame. With a healthy dose of persuasion, namely a swift kick from Sabina, the door eventually gave in, and the three stepped slowly into the charred room. It could have once been an office building, but the view before them was of twisted, melted metalwork, smouldering sections of floor and scorched walls. At the other end of the open space, the warped metal hull of a Pelican Dropship poked through the open space where the window should be.

Sabina whistled "I hate to agree with you Sara, but you're right, anyone inside that thing is toast."

He shook his head, sighing "The asset isn't dead until I see a body."

He advanced towards the wreckage slowly, wary of unstable areas. Having confirmed that the floor was still good, he moved towards the plexiglass cockpit canopy, noting that most of it was missing, and that there were smooth cut marks around the edges of the major gap in the glass. He took a peek inside, grimacing as he discovered a scorched skeleton in the pilot's seat, nothing left but bones to identify whichever poor soul met their demise in this metal can.

He stood up and turned around, walking away from the crash "Only one body, most likely the pilot's. And the cockpit view screen has been cut away by something, not just shattered." He paused, drumming his fingers on his thigh in thought. "I don't think that the ONI attaché is dead. Someone came and rescued her, cut through the plexiglass and pulled her out. We can only hope that the pilot was dead and that they didn't bother trying to get them out before the ship caught fire."

Sara nodded curtly "Makes sense, but why didn't Intelligence know about this? Surely any UNSC unit pulling an ONI uniform out of a dropship would call it in?"

He shrugged "I don't know. Long range radio transmissions have been patchy at best, maybe they've tried."

Sabina cocked her head sideways as if listening to something. "Nothing on any UNSC Frequencies. Nothing at all, which is odd."

He frowned inside his helmet. Something didn't add up here. "Hold on, let's try reaching out."

He set his frequency to ALL and started broadcasting his voice. "This is Spartan-209 to Doctor Salvia Martinez, do you read me Doctor?"

Nothing.

Sara shrugged, Sabina kicked a warped piece of metal out of the missing window.

He tried again "Doctor, if you can hear me, respond. This is Chief Petty Officer Jacob-209 broadcasting on all channels."

Nothing but static for a moment. Then came a woman's voice, speaking clearly and slowly.

"This is Doctor Martinez, the Covenant is using radio broadcasts to track our locations, so you need to go radio silent. We're relocating after this transmission. Protect and Serve. Martinez out."

The radio went dead again.

"So even a hired spook is still a spook I guess." Sara grunted "'Protect and Serve'… The Police station?"

Sabina nodded, moving towards the door to the stairway. "It's as good a guess as any, plus I fear we may be about to have our hands full, we should move."

"Agreed, Sab, take point, Sara next, I'll take rear guard, get us down to street level and to the nearest station." He ordered, raising his rifle and backing up towards the door.

"Might be a bit late for that." Sab whispered, and he looked around confused. Then he spotted a swarm of covenant fliers streaming towards them, already firing plasma weaponry. The already blackened floor now took on a shiny iridescence where fresh plasma rounds struck, throwing tiny globules of molten ash up at them, flaring their shields.

They moved as one, all three Spartans bundling into the stairwell to escape the onslaught. The door behind them caught a few rounds and began to glow, but they didn't have much time to observe it as they were already sprinting down the narrow stairwell.

"Their radio tracking is fast, we need to link up with the asset ASAP." Sara commented as they descended the floors.

"No complaints here" Sabina muttered.

Suddenly, the trio skidded to a halt about eight floors below the Pelican crash site. They had all felt it, the shuddering moans of the building's superstructure which resonated up the shaft, echoing off of the hard concrete walls.

"Let's get eyes on, now." He said, barging through the exit door onto a deserted office floor and jogging over to the window, knocking the floor-to-ceiling glass pane out of its housing with one swift kick. He crept up to the edge and looked directly below them. What he saw solidified an icy block of dread in the pit of his stomach: far below their position, about 50 floors down, a ring of purple and crimson covenant fliers circled lazily around the building, Banshees and Phantoms making up the bulk of the numbers. Every single aircraft was concentrating their fire on one particular floor, a stream of bright plasma connecting the floating hulls with glowing metalwork.

"They're trying to bring the building down." Sara whispered, shaking her head disbelievingly. "Clever bastards."

"Then we'll have to be cleverer. Sara, where's the Police station from here?" He snapped, rapidly formulating a half-plan in his mind.

"South West, about a kilometre. Why?" She responded, following him over to the corresponding corner of the building.

"Because this building isn't going to be around much longer. We need to leave." As soon as he finished speaking, the building around them groaned again, and they could all feel the supporting framework of the building moving slightly all around them, on the verge of collapse.

Sabina moaned. "Why can't there be an express elevator down?"

Sara stowed her sniper rifle and needlessly tightened the straps for her parachute "Because then it'd be boring. Last one down has to do all the paperwork for this Op."

At that, the 500 kilogram Spartan threw herself through the gap in the window, disappearing from view in an instant. He edged back towards the sheer drop and saw the black canopy open and unfurl directly below them, heading for the police station which had been marked by a green icon on their HUDs.

Sabina moved up next to him, checking her own parachute. "I would have tried to stop her, but we both know it would never have worked." She shrugged, an action notoriously difficult to perform in MJOLNIR. "This asset better be worth it. I hate having my feet just hanging there, drifting along in space. Give me a rifle and a solid patch of ground to fight on any day."

"I remember. First time we did a drop in Training you passed out in your harness." He said, fastening the webbing around his chest. "Let's go, I got your back. I'll make sure I'm last down too, I do all the paperwork anyway."

She laughed and he could tell from the genuine sound that she was smiling behind the visor. "Thanks Jay." Nodding, his comrade hesitantly jumped out of the open window, plummeting downwards.

He took a couple of steps back and from a running start jumped out of the building into the sky above the city, but before he could take in the view or pull his chute, his static-filled radio burst into life revealing the clear tones of Admiral Walker, the man who'd assigned them this mission.

"Chief Petty Officer, I don't expect a response, but I'm informing you that a massive covenant fleet just slipped in system and is heading this way, battlegroups are moving to engage, but it means that that corvette just got bumped a ways down our list of priority targets, so no nuke. I may be able to appropriate one MAC shot from ODP _Eposz_ , but that's it, choose your time wisely Spartan, Walker out."

As the Admiral spoke in his ear, Jake pulled his chute and started his gentle descent away from the building, digesting the new information quickly. He didn't dare respond, and was glad he hadn't as a dark shadow crossed over him, causing him to look up. The dominating figure of the corvette hung directly above the tower, casting ominous shadows across him and the streets below.

He yanked on the steering toggles on either side of him, taking him into a steep dive. Far below and behind him, the circle of alien aircraft spewed plasma into the belly of the building, the entire storey and its surroundings glowing white hot, melting and collapsing on itself. The monolithic skyscraper groaned audibly, a low defeated sound, and the surrounding floors around the gap collapsed on the northern side, shattering the glass windows all the way up the tower, fracturing like a spider's web. At this, the flight of covenant aircraft sped away from the area. Like rats from a sinking ship.

"She's coming down!" Sabina exclaimed, and before he or Sara could respond, the lateral lines of the corvette started glowing a dull red, quickly rising in intensity until his visor's polarising filter maxed out and he was forced to look away. With an almighty crack, the ship's point defence laser weapons discharged, slicing through the tower like a hot knife through butter. He had to crane his neck to look behind him as the bisected tower toppled northwards, swatting a stray banshee from the sky as it fell.

The chunk of building, a good 40% of the total length, crashed into the ground, the higher floors connecting with the higher floors of smaller buildings on the other side of the river, pulverising metal framework and stone facades. The trailing end of the section landed in the river, the molten edge of the structure sending up a cloud of steam as it touched the clear water.

"Note to self, avoid corvette." Sara muttered, dragging his attention back to his team and their comparably gentle descent to terra firma. With their ultra-modern SYCAMORE parachutes, the Spartans could achieve a glide ratio of about 3, meaning that for every 100 metres they descended, they could travel 300 metres along the ground horizontally. Even with the high ratio, they couldn't make it all the way to the police station.

"Set down on the green, 12 o'clock" He ordered, and acknowledgment lights blinked on his display and the two other black canopies angled towards their target.

"Anyone else get the impression that the covenant really don't want us finding that asset?" Sara asked as the trio touched down, retracting their chutes and jogging out of the park and down the abandoned street.

"I'm starting to wish she'd died in the crash." Sabina grumbled, flicking a speck of debris that had fallen into a recess in her armour.

"I'm sure she'd be delighted to hear that when we find her." He huffed. Part of him was with her. The Covenant were on Reach, the UNSC was on the verge of being defeated on one of its prime military hubs, and here three whole Spartan-II Super Soldiers were mucking about rescuing some Engineer. This Dr Martinez had better be worth it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Dr Salvia Martinez, ONI attaché, 16:17, August 15** **th** **, 2552, City of Manassas**

 **2.5 hours after crash**

"Bird? Bird!" She mumbled, shaking the pilot's shoulders weakly. Her harness had not broken as easily as Salvia's had, and the limp body of the pilot hung from the ceiling, well, the floor of the cockpit, but the ceiling of the upside-down version. She struggled to rise from the bank of instruments she'd ended up resting on, and winced as jolts of pain flared in her chest.

She raised a hand and felt Bird's neck for a pulse. Nothing. She stared dumbstruck, too in shock for the airman's death to really register. She crawled into the rear of the cockpit and tried the door controls, which mercifully resulted in the door swooshing open.

A wall of heat met her, scorching her face. She slapped the control panel, coughing as a billowing cloud of acrid smoke entered the cramped space before the door slammed shut again. Coughs continued to force themselves from her throat, leaving her hoarse, blinking tears from her eyes, which stung and reddened in the chemical-tainted smoke.

She shuffled around, eventually contorting herself so she faced out of the Plexiglas view screen, which gave her a fantastic view of the inside of an office building, cubicles and desks as far as she could see. She pounded her fist on the glass to no avail. Of course she couldn't break through, the damn thing was designed to take several hundred small-calibre bullets before it so much as chipped.

She looked around her, searching desperately for some way out of this metal coffin, painfully aware of the rapidly increasing heat within the cabin: it was already approaching sauna-level temperature, and sweat ran down her face, mixing with soot in the air to form a black layer of grime on her face. There was nothing in the cockpit that could help her, no laser cutter or release mechanism, heck at this point she'd settle for a can opener.

She screamed in frustration and desperation, immediately regretting it as she coughed, convulsing violently. Resigned to her fate, she searched the dead pilot for her sidearm, unslinging the bulbous M6 pistol from the holster and cocking it. There was no way that she'd go out burned alive, the quick and painless death she was now choosing for herself seemed much more bearable.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you Doc." Came a voice over her chatter, accompanied by a dull knocking from behind her.

She spun around, readied pistol still in her hand and saw a squad of armoured soldiers in the previously empty office, led by a familiar black-armoured man crouching in front of the view screen.

"Haverson!" She exclaimed, moving over to the glass, coughing and wheezing. "Get me out of here!"

"Simmons, give me that laser, now!" He barked as he turned around to one of the other soldiers, and when he turned back he was clutching a large pen-like object. "Doc, back up and cover your eyes, this is a 20 kilowatt cutter, even indirect observation can blind."

She pushed herself as far back as she could stand in the heat and closed her eyes shut tightly, listening the crackling of the high-power laser cutting the thick composite. 20 seconds later, she heard the device cease its loud efforts and felt a cool breeze caress her cheek. She opened her eyes and crawled forward towards the light, ignoring the heavenly imagery as she clambered over the warm edge of the hole in the view screen and out onto the cool office floor, struggling to rise to her feet, head dizzy with smoke inhalation.

"Easy doc, easy, somebody grab her a chair!" the Lieutenant yelled, and a young Private wheeled over a swivel chair, which she collapsed on to, breathing raggedly, shaking slightly.

It was a good while before she made herself look up, trying to look apologetic for her lack of composure. "I'm no soldier, I'm not good with guns and bullets and aliens."

He shrugged "No one expects you to be Doc, that's why you've got us. You okay? What about the pilot?"

She shook her head "No pulse, I'm fine, I'm good." She got to her feet, breathing slowly and deeply, trying to compose herself.

He nodded "That's a damn shame. If you're good to go Doc, we need to move. Covenant's moving in hard, we were almost run down just getting here." She looked around and saw the other soldiers moving towards the office doorway, rifles up and ready, a couple of them had minor plasma scorching on their battle armour.

He reached out his hand "Give me your sidearm." She complied, and he expertly took the weapon apart and inspected it, grunting approvingly. "This is one fine M6, custom grip, engraved slide, explosive rounds. You certified with the M6D?" He held it out to her.

She nodded, tentatively taking the bulky pistol back and holding it in her hands, getting a feel for the balance of it. "I'm ready when you are. What's the plan?"

He waved for her to follow him, and she did so, walking out of the office room, out into the floor's lobby and into the emergency stairwell. "Right now Doc, my plan is pretty much 'don't get shot, don't let you get shot, get out of the city'. Everything else is up in the air." He informed her as they bolted downstairs behind the heavy footfalls of the Marine squad.

"Hey, I like the plan so far." She muttered, already out of breath as they sprinted down the stairs. Why hadn't she worked out more? I mean, she was no slouch, and she was comfortable with her body's look, but it really helped to have a little bit more stamina.

"I'm going to patch you into the UNSC Comms networks so you can keep in touch if we get separated." He called over his shoulder, and suddenly her ear was buzzing with military signals, and she had to mute the extraneous channels.

They finally made it to the ground floor, bursting out into the lobby of the legal office that owned the building. The soldiers strode purposefully towards the large glass doors, cocking weapons and slipping into silence. It was only now that she heard the orchestra of war; nearby, all around them, the rattle and cracks of small arms fire echoed around the empty streets, further away, every once in a while she would hear the thunderous roar of something much heavier, or the high-pitched screams of aircraft, both those which she recognised as jet engines and the softer more menacing whining of impulse drives.

"Recon Six Niner, this is Kilo 22, what's the situation of East 13th Street, around the Derico Legal offices?" The burly sergeant inquired over the radio.

There was a moment's pause, then a heavily accented voice came through "Kilo 22, I'm seeing a high enemy presence in that area, nearest friendly zone is 10th street, roughly 800 metres south. I spot about two dozen infantry, no mechanicals, but there's a couple of gators ordering the little guys about, could be trouble. Over."

The Sergeant swore loudly, shouldering his Assault rifle before responding. "Copy that Recon Six Niner."

Haverson took over "Overlord, any assets that can give us Close Air Support as we re-join with friendly forces? Enemy lines have moved forward past us."

"Affirmative Kilo 22, I've got a Hornet in the AO, call sign Sierra 250, re-routing to provide CAS. Warning, he can't stay for long, enemy air presence is too strong in that sector. Acknowledge."

"Acknowledged Overlord, Kilo 22 out." He responded, motioning the team to exit the building. She followed closely, trying to keep as low as possible as they jogged down the stairs from the doors to street level along a wall. When they got to the end of it, Haverson held his fist up above his shoulder, peeking his head around the obsidian monolith.

"Two Elites, about 20 grunts, going door to door." He mumbled, withdrawing behind cover. "They're focussing on the other side of the street for now." He turned to the Marines "I'm going to signal CAS to open fire as you toss some frags over there. Divide them with the grenades, conquer with the Hornet." He showed no sign of the lethargy and exhaustion he'd shown earlier in Tolna Tower.

They nodded eagerly, resting their rifles against the wall and priming grenades. Haverson nodded and waved them out from behind the wall. She moved up next to him, craning her neck to try and see live Covenant for the first time, but before she could glimpse the genocidal conglomerate, Haverson pushed her back, shaking his head and talking into his microphone.

"Hornet's on the way" He said quietly, counting down with his fingers. On one, all five of them tossed their devices, immediately taking cover behind the bus stop outside the building. As they threw themselves to the ground, the whine of engines that had been steadily rising in volume suddenly reached a crescendo, and the roar of the AV-14 Hornet VTOL deafened her as it soared over an office building and opened up on the unsuspecting group of aliens.

The cluster of grenades detonated before the hornet's rounds could strike, flaring the two elites' shield and knocking them and their grunt subordinates to the floor. She couldn't quite see how many grunts the grenades had killed, Haverson was still holding her back. All she could hear was the thunderous booming of missile detonation couples with the sickly thwacks of 30mm shells tearing through flesh. After about 20 seconds, the din halted, and Haverson peeked around the corner.

"That's a lot of dead covenant" He whistled, before switching to Comms "Good effect on target Sierra 250, much obliged."

"Copy that Kilo 22, Sierra 250 RTB." Came the pilot's voice, and the vehicle tilted its engines and powered away.

"Move out, we got somewhere to be!" The sergeant yelled, and the group moved away from the building along the street, past the body parts and bright blue blood where the alien squad had been moments before. She gagged on the nauseating mixture of smells, the charred alien flesh, the whiff of explosive residue hanging in the air and the acrid smell of melted tarmac were among just a few of them.

She was hastily bundled along down the business districts high building-sided streets, and behind the desperate sounds of her ragged breath, the clinking of the Marines' equipment and the stamping of their boots on the sidewalk, she could hear the sounds of the city falling. In the background there was the faded blaring of the city's evacuation alarm from a couple of streets over combined with distant heavy artillery bombardment, sounding like the almighty beating of a colossal drum. Much closer by came the harsh sounds of intense gunfire, a sound which she noted that they were headed directly towards.

"Stack up!" The Sergeant half whispered half shouted, and the group threw themselves up against the tyres of a huge tanker truck.

"Recon Six Niner, this is Kilo 22, what's the situation with the street in front of us, over?" Haverson asked

"From up here, looks like friendly forces are to your right, enemy to your left, your intersection is right in the middle of no man's land. Friendly call-sign is Tango 9"

"Copy that." Haverson looked irritated as he turned to the rest of them. "This is a problem. I was hoping that we could re-join friendly lines with no problem, but looks like we're going to have to shoot our way in."

She gulped hard, tightening her hold on her sidearm until her knuckles turned white. She was already miles out of her depth, she'd never even shot at anything but a paper target before, how the hell could she survive this?

"Tango 9, this is Kilo 22, do you read?"

Nothing, for a couple of seconds, then came the thunderous roar of a high-calibre gun discharging, propelling the payload past them towards the enemies to their left. A dull detonation followed the screaming of the shell, and judging from the size of it, she guessed that it had to belong to one of the UNSC's many MBTs or heavily armed APCs. Most likely a Scorpion MBT, just because the sheer quantity produced and fielded.

"We read you Kilo 22, what can we do for you?"

"We're just south of the intersection of 15th and Main street, behind a Traxus oil tanker, we've got a tier 1 asset and need to get behind friendly lines, requesting suppressive fire on enemy positions until we can join you, over." Haverson rattled off, peeking his head around one side of the truck's fender to get a good view of the enemy.

The response came through almost immediately. "Roger that, we've got readings on your IFF tags, starting suppressive fire."

Instantly the volume of gunfire increased tenfold, accompanied by the chattering of an HMG. The Marines all jumped up and started sprinting around the truck towards the right, and she had only just gotten to her feet when Haverson grabbed her arm and pulled her after them.

She shook him off of her and ran away from the truck, slipping onto the sidewalk of the main street through Manassas. She remembered fondly her first day on leave here, looking through all the shops, planning her meals in the high-end restaurants lining the road, but now most of those establishments lay in ruin, and glass fronting shattered, stone facades ruined, nothing but rubble. A couple of the high stone buildings had massive craters in their sides, and rubble littered the streets in between the maze of abandoned cars and trucks.

About a hundred metres distant, she saw their goal, a row of sandbags and carefully placed cars shielding friendly forces, which consisted of at least two dozen grey-fatigued soldiers firing past them, as well as the flat angular turret of a Scorpion poking above a sandbag wall, using its coaxial machine gun to great effect. The 90mm gun swung around and belched another shell, eliciting jolts of searing pain from her inner ear. Her hearing dulled, replacing all but the most bass heavy sounds with a head-splitting ringing. She gasped in pain but kept running, her step faltering for a brief second as she dragged her eyes up and saw the flashes of light as the Marines on the barricade continued firing, their gunshots now dull thuds.

As she ran towards the gap in the defensive line, she risked craning her head around for a view of the suppressed enemies; the battleground behind them was covered in craters from explosive weapons and huge black scorch marks from plasma weaponry, about 300 metres behind them she spotted several of the Grunt-type aliens cowering behind a car, only the tips of their methane tanks visible, quivering in fear. One of their tanks was punctured by a lucky rifle round, and it detonated, sending a flare of blue flame up from behind the vehicle and showering the nearby are with both his and his comrades' entrails.

Haverson yelled something over his shoulder, but his voice was lost on her damaged ears

She followed suit, tearing her eyes away from the enemies behind to focus on the allies in front. There was a tiny gap in the line between the end of the sandbags and the stone wall of the bank next to it, just wide enough to fit her. She forced herself in the gap and was quickly pulled behind the line by Haverson.

She sat down heavily, panting and wheezing, her vision tunnelling slightly. Haverson leaned over her, yelling something and waving over an Army Medic, who looked closely into her eyes and ears, conferring with Haverson and presumably telling him that she couldn't hear them. Haverson nodded slowly, looking at her with pity and grabbed a data-pad from the Medic, typing out a message and showing her.

Are you okay?

She just nodded, her throat too sore for words. He seemed satisfied, and waved the Medic away, touching his earpiece and talking rapidly. He held up the tablet again after his brief conversation had concluded.

Vehicle on its way, hang tight.

She nodded again and struggled to her feet, using him for balance. He looked concerned, but she patted his arm and mouthed _I'll be fine_. He gave her a thumbs up and walked away towards an Army Lieutenant hanging around near the barricade. While they exchanged salutes and shook hands, she wandered over towards the Scorpion tank, the ringing in her ears subsiding somewhat.

The Medic came over to her holding two tiny beads of foam in one hand, offering them to her. "Here you go ma'am, should keep your ears in one piece." His voice was distorted, but audible, and she graciously took the adaptive earplugs from him, smiling in thanks as he shouldered his rifle, an old MA37, and walked back to the line, where the shooting had died down a little.

She pushed the earplugs into her ear canals, where they automatically expanded to fit their shape. She was familiar with the design, she'd used many like it aboard the _Hephaestus_ to protect her hearing from the barrage of shipbuilding tools that were in action pretty much 24/7. The smart foam would detect any sounds above the safe limit of 85 decibels and change conformation to block the sounds, but would relax when sound level were normal. This ensured the best combination of hearing protection and situational awareness during downtime.

She turned her attention to the back of the tank, where copious amount of grey smoke/steam was rising from the open engine cover. A mechanic was leaned over the open compartment, fiddling with wires and tubes, swearing loudly. She checked out the profile of the vehicle, taking in the stripped down tread covers and bulked up turret armour. It was a 5th generation M808B Scorpion, and she knew enough about the machine to fix it.

"Soldier, what's the matter?" She asked as she approached, rolling up the sleeves of her ONI uniform.

"I don't know ma'am, she just up and died on me, no engine power at all." The mechanic threw his arms up in the air exhaustedly.

"She been serviced recently?" She asked, a nugget of information she'd overheard in the officers' mess on the _Hephaestus_ coming to the forefront of her mind. "How's the oil pressure been lately?"

"What with the end of the world, we haven't had much time for a service." The mechanic answered. "And the pressure's been shit for days, why?" He looked puzzled, and wiped his face with his hand leaving a black grease mark on his cheek.

"The M808B-5 is about to have a low profile recall/mass-service issued. Some researcher on Mars has proved that after a few hundred hours of use, one of the primary coolant lines shakes itself loose from its housing, have a look at it and use some duct tape to secure it, I guarantee this beast will be running like a dream in no time." She informed, slapping the man's back and walking over to Haverson, who was subtly beckoning her over.

"Thanks, I hope." The soldier muttered, reaching for his tool kit as she walked over to the Lieutenant.

Haverson looked like someone had just told him his mother had died, his hands were balled up into fists, his gaze downturned, and his face ghostly white.

"What's wrong?" She asked tentatively

"You know that flash in the sky before your bird went down? That was a CSO-class supercarrier being destroyed by a team of Spartans. Its escort is mostly engaged in ground operations across the continent, and one of them, an SDV-class corvette is inbound on this location. ETA 30 minutes." He said, shaking his head sadly.

"Shit." She muttered, not really grasping the importance of this revelation "What does this mean?"

"It means, Doc, that your extraction just became a hell of a lot harder, speaking of which." He trailed off as the sound of a throaty engine loudened. He jogged over towards the Army Lieutenant and shook his hand, thanking him.

As he did so, the engine noise tripled as an M12 Warthog rounded the corner and came to a halt in front of her. The Marine Corporal in the driving seat bundled out and saluted her smartly, automatically respecting the ONI uniform.

"At ease Marine, the Lieutenant is over there." She said, smiling as Haverson moved over next to her, exchanging salutes with the young Marine.

"Corporal" He nodded. "Did you bring the body armour?"

"Yes sir, I've got a full set in the passenger seat. Ma'am, right this way, I'll get you suited up in no time." The Marine beckoned her forward, and she followed him around the front grill and vicious-looking tusks of the Hog. He leaned into the passenger seat and pulled a black version of the Marine BDU out, draping it over her neck and quickly fastening all the straps before handing her a black Helmet, which she gingerly forced down over her ears, flicking down the integrated visor which covered her eyes and provided a basic HUD.

She was instantly overloaded by the array of information thrown up all over her HUD, and quickly stripped it down to only the ammunition counter for her sidearm, which had automatically linked with the helmet systems, and the radio channel display.

She helped the Corporal affix the last components of the BDU, the leg armour and boot covers, which seemed ridiculously unnecessary to cover her simple leather work shoes. When the Corporal finished tightening the straps and activating the Nano-fibre assemblies in her ONI uniform which adhered to the armour plating, she looked similar to the Lieutenant, clad in protective black armour.

"Do a little twirl for me Doc." Haverson smirked, hauling himself into the driver's seat of the vehicle and starting the engine with a meaty rumble.

"Bite me." She muttered in response, walking around a little to get a feel for the mobility of the heavy armour, rolling her shoulders and stretching her limbs. She climbed aboard the Warthog, struggling initially to scale the jeep's 36-inch ride height, but after a couple of attempts she managed, slinking into the passenger seat.

"Corporal, man the 50." Haverson instructed the marine, who expertly vaulted onto the vehicles rear end, seizing the controls of the triple-barrelled M41 Light Anti-Aircraft-Gun and traversing around to scan the air around them.

"All right then, hold on to something Doc, these things aren't built for comfort." Elias warned, shifting into 1st gear and pressing the accelerator to the floor.

Her entire body was forced into the seat as the M12's fuel cell split water into hydrogen and used the flammable gas to go from 0-60 in no time at all. They sped down street after street through the debris and destruction of war, many buildings were pockmarked with plasma scorches, and every now and then a flight of banshee fliers would duck underneath the level of the skyscrapers to fire into the streets below at the thousands of UNSC troops preparing defensive positions.

They skidded to a halt in front of a column of slow-moving Scorpion tanks heading towards the front line, their moaning engines adding to the sounds of fervent activity. She'd never seen so much military in one location, but there they were; a column of at least a hundred and fifty UNSC Marines, a whole Company, all of whom were heavily armed, jogging in formation alongside the tanks down the sidewalk, chanting the UNSC Marine cadence in a call-response fashion, the Sergeants of each Platoon yelling out first followed by the bulk of the Marines in response.

"Helljumper, Helljumper where you been?

Feet first into hell and back again!

When I die please bury me deep!

Place an MA5 down by my feet

Don't cry for me, don't shed no tear!..."

They trailed off into the distance, their voices echoing around the deserted streets, sounding oddly lonely, shouting against the darkness closing in. The tanks lumbered along, spreading out and moving in pairs down each street towards the enemy lines. Mingled among the military were black-suited ODSTs arranged in teams of four, each team walked over to the temporary command centre, which was in reality a glorified tent.

Haverson drummed his hands on the steering wheel, waiting for the group of Warthogs to pass the other way before they could pass them. "I wasn't expecting this much of a response, but we need to get around this traffic, and out of the city. Air extraction may be off limit for now, but we need to get to a safer location, before-"

Suddenly, all eyes turned skyward, and a ripple of panic spread throughout the congregation of soldiers. Haverson swore loudly and put his foot down, mounting the sidewalk to avoid the column of now frozen vehicles. Before she could turn her head to see what everyone else was staring at, he accelerated further, forcing her back.

"What's going on?" She asked.

He didn't answer her, but yelled at their gunner "Corporal, I need you to scan the skies, keep an eye on that mother fu-"

"Haverson!" She interrupted, grabbing his arm "What the hell is going on?"

"Take a look Doc!" He yelled back, not looking away from the road ahead, swerving violently to avoid an overturned garbage can.

She twisted her body around in the seat, leaning over to peer around the Corporal on the turret. At first she couldn't spot what everyone was so worked up about, all she noticed were a couple of banshee fliers at high altitude circling lazily high above the city., but as they sped down the street, the menacing shape of a covenant SDV-class heavy corvette slunk into view above a skyscraper.

"Shit." She muttered as the warship dropped low to just above the tallest buildings. Where were the AAA defences? Her question was answered a moment later when a dozen propellant trails snaked towards the alien invader, only to be shot down by the pulsating laser defences which sprung out from the ship's lateral batteries. Lances of light darted through the air and detonated the missiles' high explosive payload.

Of course, from this distance, all she could really see were twelve tiny puffs of smoke as the missiles were neutralised. The corvette proceeded to swoop through the air, banking hard towards the source of the aggression, its plasma batteries glowing a dull blue against its bright red hull. Teardrop shaped missiles of superheated plasma, now bright white, arced down from the ship and disappeared behind a building, although she shuddered to think what devastation they caused to the missile battery.

"Lieutenant! Banshees, 5 o'clock, fast and low!" The Corporal yelled over the noise of the engine and the roar of the wind. She watched, transfixed as the Marine swivelled the turret to face the three purple Banshee fighters heads straight for them over a municipal park area, their impulse drives' ghostly wails rising in volume as the neared.

The gunner thumbed the controls for the M41 and the triple-barrelled weapon spooled up quickly and began firing. The .50 calibre rounds spewed from the Gatling gun at an alarming rate, and once her earbuds had rapidly adjusted to the din, it sounded more like a million pieces of cloth being ripped at once than traditional gunfire. Bullet casings cascaded down into the turret bay and onto her shoulders.

She craned her neck to try and observe the effects of this devastating barrage of lead; initially the fliers seemed to shrug off the punishment, ducking and weaving to try and throw the Corporal's aim off, but after a few seconds the lead aircraft twitched and shuddered as the Armour Piercing rounds gutted it. Its engines sputtered and failed, and it fell from the sky, crashing onto the street behind them and detonating in a blue fireball.

"That's more like it Corporal! Give 'em hell!" Haverson whooped from the steering wheel as he jerked the hog to the left down a side street.

As he did so, the remaining two pursuant craft came within weapons range, and their twin plasma canons opened up, strafing the area around the Hog with blue bolts of superheated plasma. One bolt splashed across the hood of the vehicle, blistering and melting the titanium armour plating, sending a cloud of vaporised metal and composite over the M12, thankfully avoiding the soft flesh of its occupants.

Haverson began to swerve heavily from left to right, dodging the sprays of plasma and avoiding collisions with the abandoned cars and once they almost collided with the massive frame of one of the city's Elephant automated Garbage trucks. The ONI officer swore again and shifted up a gear, eliciting a crunching noise from the gearbox, which she assumed must have been damaged by the Banshee's fire.

"Shit shit shit." He cursed, barely audible over the din of the machine gun. "Corporal, I'm going to need those Banshees down sooner rather than later!"

There was no response, but the gun continued its chorus of brass and lead, the clinking of fallen shell casings sounding like metal rain.

"Corporal?!" Haverson yelled, and she turned around in her seat to try and tap his leg or something to grab his attention.

The Corporal was dead. He had evidently been hit by a plasma bolt, which had easily eaten away the layers of armour strapped to his chest and melted the flesh all the way through to bone and out the other side. In his last few moments he must have slumped forward onto the gun, because it was now pointed straight up, firing on full auto in the dead man's hands.

"Gunner's dead!" She yelled at Haverson, feeling sick to her stomach as she yanked hard at the body's leg, dragging the man's body off of the gun and over the side of the jeep. She didn't look at where he fell, but made a mental note to find out that Marine's name. Someone had to remember the sacrifice he'd made, so it might as well be her.

"God damn it, alright Doc, tell me where those bastards are." The Lieutenant ordered, gripping the steering wheel tightly and gritting his teeth.

She scanned the sky and quickly spotted the remaining Banshee; the other had evidently bugged out, but the last one had them in its sights, swooping down from on high. Oddly enough, it wasn't firing its plasma canons, and yet it was well within weapons range.

"It's at 6 o'clock, low, but it's not firing!" She reported, unholstering her M6D and pointing it squarely at the looming fighter.

"Wait, what? Oh, oh shit, hold onto something Doc, we're in for a world of hurt if I don't get us out of here!"

"What do you…?" She began to ask, but she was cut off by the appearance of a green glow emanating from the front of the Banshee.

The Fuel Rod canon discharged, and the massive bolt of radioactive energy sped towards them. Time slowed down, there was not a second to waste telling the Lieutenant, and she had to act. She whipped her body around to face forward and leaned over, forcibly jerking the steering wheel hard left just as the energy round hit the exact spot where the M12 would have been had she not acted.

The round detonated, scorching one side of her face with intense heat and throwing her bodily sideways in the vehicle, which itself was tipped onto its side and thrown across the road, hitting a couple of cars before coming to rest. During this episode her head was whipped around, bashing against the titanium skeleton divider between the driver and passenger's seats.

Her vision darkened as the now too familiar feeling of being knocked out flooded through her, her limbs going limp, all the muscles in her body relaxing as she lost consciousness. It was only thanks to this limpness that she wasn't injured more, but even still she felt a sickening pop as her shoulder dislocated and an equally nauseating crack as her elbow dislocated as well.

Fighting the pain and the impending blackness, she realised that the Hog had come to a stop and as she craned her neck around to check in on Haverson, she noted with a sigh of relief that he was relatively unhurt, but equally unconscious as she was soon to be. She coughed and immediately winced at the jolts of pain spasming through her.

There she lay for a couple of minutes, waiting for the inevitable dark, but before she could slip into sweet sleep, she felt gloved hands gently lift her out of the passenger seat and onto the pavement. She willed herself to open her eyes, her hearing now muted as blood pooled to the essential organs, and saw herself reflected in an angular silver/blue visor.

Her imagination conjured up fantasies of armoured knights as she slipped into unconsciousness, letting the darkness engulf her finally.

 **Chief Petty Officer Jacob-209, August 16** **th** **2552, 12:41 Zulu Time, MPD Head Quarter, City of Manassas**

"Hold up, contacts, dead ahead." Sara whispered over TEAMCOM, flashing her status light to amber. "I spot three, in the lobby, two IFF tags and a civilian Chatter transponder."

Sara, ever the eagle-eyed sniper, had opted to take the high ground for their rendezvous with Dr Martinez and was currently camped out on top of the residential block across the street looking through the scope of her rifle's thermal scope. He and Sabina were just off the street waiting for the all clear, crouched in the shadows of a back alley that ran alongside the Manassas Police Head Quarters.

"Copy that, any sign of Covenant activity?" He asked. It wasn't as if he didn't trust the Doctor, but if the Covenant were half as smart as them they could have figured out the code in Martinez' last transmission, and therefore could be waiting to pounce on not just a tier 1 ONI asset, but three Spartans, or as they called them, "Demons".

"Negative, closest Covvies I see are a few blocks away, we should be clear for now." Sara responded, and he knew through years of working closely beside her that she would instantly alert them if anything changed.

"Alright, let me know if anything changes, we're going in." He said, checking for the hundredth time to ensure his MA5C had a full magazine and the safety was off. He turned his head to look at Sabina, who nodded almost imperceptibly.

He stretched his legs and stood to his full height, keeping his rifle levelled but not aimed at anything in particular, and walked slowly down the dank and decrepit alleyway and out onto the street. As they approached the revolving doors to the Manassas Police Department HQ he activated his IFF tag, which would hopefully warn the others of the Spartans' arrival and prevent them from shooting on sight. Through the glass frontage of the building he could clearly see the three people standing in a loose triangle, apparently deep in conversation in the middle of the marbled lobby.

When the two Spartans started using the automatic revolving doors, one of the figures, a heavily armoured Orbital Drop Shock Trooper, turned around quickly, aiming their M7S SMG squarely at the pair. The other two were slower to react, and Jake took note of the shorter soldier's inexperience with the sidearm they raised, fumbling with the holster for a brief moment before half raising the M6 model pistol. The third man didn't even try to draw his weapon, just turned his head slightly at the two Spartans.

The ODST quickly lowered the weapon, and the un-helmeted man in black armour waved them over. As they walked quickly over, his expert eyes took in details about the trio; the middle figure, who he surmised must be the Doctor, had her left arm in a sling, and seemed ill at ease in the ONI issue BDU, the un-helmeted man on the left, whose IFF tag identified him as one Lieutenant Elias Haverson, carried with him the air of an ONI spook, ice cool and relaxed. The ODST's tag named him as Lance Corporal Adam Kovic, and appeared as any of the Helljumpers did behind the silver-reflective visor, impossible to read. He suddenly felt sympathy for other members of the forces when they met Spartans in the field, if this ODST was an enigma to him, he couldn't imagine how unnerving his demeanour could be.

"Spartans" Haverson greeted, initiating the exchange of salutes. "Still in one piece after your little demolition experience?"

"Yes sir, all present and accounted for." He turned to the ONI attaché and nodded in greeting. "Ma'am, Admiral Walker sends his regards."

She snorted "No doubt, what's the plan?" She looked up at him expectantly, holstering her weapon and adjusting her sling slightly.

"Jake, we got Covenant patrols inbound, ETA 4 minutes, we've got to get out of here or take them out." Sara's voice came over his comms, and Sabina's acknowledgement light flashed green in response. He activated his own light and looked down at the Asset.

"There's a covenant patrol incoming, we're leaving, now." He looked up at the two men either side of her. "Afraid we'll have to skip the pleasantries gentlemen, I've been given Operational Command of any and all UNSC forces within the city limits by the Admiral, just so we're clear."

The ODST and the Spook nodded in unison, the former shouldering his M7S silenced SMG and the latter checking the slide of his sidearm as Jake led the group towards the revolving doors to get back out onto the street. Sabina took up the rear guard, her M90 readied, the only external sign of her alertness, but behind the mirrored visor he knew that she would be constantly scanning rooftops, shadowy alleyways and supposedly empty buildings, all while keeping her eye on the plethora of sensors splashed across her HUD. The end result of this hyper-alertness was that even if so much as a rat two blocks away moved from one room to another, Sabina would know in an instant.

"Your meta data accompanying your transmission earlier indicated a three-man fire-team, don't tell me one of you got lost?" Salvia quipped as they moved through the revolving doors one at a time, stepping through slightly awkwardly so as to protect her injured shoulder.

He furrowed his brow, turning around and looking at the surprisingly resourceful civilian "How did you access encrypted UNSC meta-data?" No one, save for trained and authorised military intelligence technicians, could normally access the encoded information.

She smiled crookedly, evidently happy to know something the Spartan didn't. "I have my ways, helpful in a situation like this, wouldn't you agree?"

He grunted. He'd done enough civilian rescue operations to know her angle; she wanted to prove herself useful to the group, not just dead weight. A similar situation had occurred in a rescue op on Jericho VII, some gun club nut who wasn't as good a shot as he thought he was, almost got them all killed on numerous occasions. In this case however, listening in to communications could prove to be very useful.

"In answer to your question, Doctor, Spartans don't get lost."

The pavement next to the Doctor cracked as Sara jumped out of the third storey window and landed about two metres away from the surprised civvie. Sara straightened up, wielding her M7, her Sniper Rifle firmly attached to her back, and walked lazily over towards a shocked Martinez.

Kovic lowered his own weapon, having instinctively pointed it at the potential threat, and shook his head. "You Spartans always gotta make an entrance, huh?"

"Says the guy who literally drops from space into battle?" Sara retorted "Yeah, real subtle"

Kovic shrugged "Point taken"

Jake added the two military communicators and the civilian Chatter device onto the TEAMCOM network. "Try not to use the radios, we've already seen that too much use attracts all sorts of trouble."

The others nodded, and Sara stepped forward, jerking her thumb backwards down the abandoned street. "Covenant patrol, 5 Elites, 6 times that many Grunts, plus they've got Skirmishers on overwatch, about a click East, moving towards us."

"Skirmishers are trouble." Jake muttered, waving for the group to follow him as he started jogging down the street in the opposite direction, which they did, Sabina falling into place at the back of them, Sara moving alongside him at the front.

"Sorry, what exactly are Skirmishers for those of us who haven't had a whole lifetime of shooting them in the face?" gasped Salvia in between winces; her shoulder was making it hard for her to keep up with them.

"A sub species of Jackal, feathered, about twice as large and twice as aggressive. Hard to hit, they're agile to boot." Kovic informed her.

"Great" She said, voice dripping with sarcasm as the group turned a corner onto a narrow apartment-lined street. "Where the hell are we going?"

"Nakatomi Plaza, friendly forces" Sara stated brusquely

"We've been in contact with some guys at Nakatomi Plaza." Haverson piped up "There were about 20 of them when we last spoke, they were going to send a team to come get us, but then we figured out that the covenant was using long-range radio broadcasts to hone in on us, so we told them to stay put and cut off all comms, that was about 4 hours ago."

They lapsed into silence for the next couple of hours, darting down streets, alleys and avenues, keeping to the shadows cast by the mid-evening sun and avoiding dozens of Covenant Patrols scouring the streets for them. And although they couldn't take the direct route due to the surveillance and patrolling enemies, their meandering path headed in the general direction of the residential Nakatomi Plaza. As they moved onwards, the buildings surrounding them changed from the low-rise office buildings, banks and shops of the district from which they had come to taller residential buildings, made to resemble old Earth city apartment blocks, with ornate staircases leading off of the sidewalk up to the main front doors. The restaurants they had previously passed now were cafes and fast food places, catering to the needs of the middle and lower classes.

All the while, the haunting figure of the Covenant Corvette hung above the skyscrapers of the business district across the river, slowly prowling around the area, accompanied by a swarm of phantoms and spirits as a shark is followed by remoras. The sight deeply disturbed him, he wasn't used to being this close to an enemy ship and not taking some course of action against it. Normally the ship would be the highest priority target, not some civilian smartass with a broken arm.

As the bright disc of Epsilon Eridani sunk low in the sky, they were a mere four city blocks away from their destination, and could see the towering apartment block rising at least three times as tall as its neighbours, the bright red logo of the Nakatomi Corporation emblazoned on the side. Apparently, according to Haverson, who insisted on filling the silence with useless trivia, the building was intended to house workers employed by the Corporation, but had laid empty for a decade when the company went bust.

"Sara, try hailing them with the short-wave." He said from his position behind a moving van. The group had spread out slightly as they got more comfortable with movement, reducing the effect of potential aggression as well. Right now, Martinez, Haverson and Sabina were crouched in the shadow of a city bus 15 metres behind him, Sara was on the other side of the street taking cover behind a scooter, and Kovic was with him, pressed up against the rear of a truck, sneaking peeks out to check rooftops occasionally.

A few seconds passed, then Sara said "Nothing, just static."

"Figures" He mumbled, then signalled the group to move forward, darting from cover to cover.

"How do we know that they're even still alive?" Haverson asked from the back, sounding like he didn't want to believe it.

"We don't" Sabina responded. It was the first time the Spartan had spoken since the rendezvous at the Police Head Quarters, and she was doing a remarkably good job of sounding as sinister as possible. He couldn't tell if she was uneasy with their new colleagues, or she was just messing around with them.

"That's… cheerful" Kovic muttered.

"Inbound! Flight of Phantoms, count three birds in the air, heading towards the Plaza!" Sara called out, and sure enough, three pearlescent purple teardrops swooped towards them from the Business District, the faint whine of their impulse drives loudening.

Jake swung his view over and upwards towards the upper floors of the Plaza, expecting some sort of defensive fire; nothing came, ore evidence that the defenders had been wiped out. Something didn't add up though; if the Covenant knew that there were UNSC forces in the area, why didn't the corvette just vaporise the whole building with its pulse lasers?

His answer was immediate and brutal; from the roof of the building, hidden beyond the lip of the edge, came trails of fire and thick smoke as 6 projectiles arced through the air, covering the roughly 2 kilometre gap between the launcher and the incoming Phantoms in three seconds. The Covenant dropships didn't stand a chance, despite their last-second evasive manoeuvres, the missiles detonated in fiery blue blossoms of light, ripping the curved hulls of the alien dropships apart and sending them tumbling down to the ground, spewing pale blue smoke and bright blue plasma coolant. The three former dropships careened into a public park a click away, throwing up a terrific pulse of blue-tinged smoke into the air. The conflict was over so quickly that the sound of the engagement only reached them a couple of seconds afterwards, the whoosh of the launch and booms of their deadly payloads' explosions echoing around the deserted cityscape.

They all looked around, dumbfounded for a few seconds, and then Sara whispered "Well, I guess they're still home."

"Fireteam Resistance to Sierra two-zero-niner, we see you down there, couldn't let the covvies know we were here before we took them down" Came a heavily Hungarian accented female voice over the short-wave, sounding exhausted "But I think the time for subtlety is over, we'll cover you with snipers until you can get to the Plaza, over."

"Copy that Fireteam Resistance, we'll be with you shortly." Jake acknowledged, shaking his head before switching to TEAMCOM "Crazy bastards"

"I know that voice…" Kovic began to say, but he was cut off by the same female voice over the radio, with a sudden spike of urgency in her tones;

"Sierra 209, enemy air units inbound on your position, they must be tracking the short-wave radio now! Triple-A emplacement is reloading, we can't cover you! They must've known where you are and sent the Phantoms to draw our fire!"

"Sara?" He barked, his heart suddenly racing "Where are they?"

"I have no idea, they must be flying underneath the skyline, and my long-range sensors aren't picking them up!" She sounded panicked, and that scared him more than anything else.

"Okay, everybody get into the buildings, we need to take cover!" Jake ordered, dragging Kovic out of cover and sprinting to the nearest structure, a grocery store with smashed in windows next to them. He glanced around at the Doctor, happy to see Sabina pulling her and Haverson towards the building on the other side of the street, an elementary school.

"Too late, Lich!" Sara's voice came over the comms, and suddenly the looming form of a Lich-class heavy assault craft thundered into view, skidding to a halt above the street a block down, the purple scintillating light of the gravity lift springing into life below it. The plasma turrets at the bow of the hulking aircraft opened up, splashing white hot ionised liquid over the streets, forcing them into cover.

"Get into cover now!" He ordered, practically throwing Kovic into the store and turning to fire on the file of covenant troops being deployed, most by the gravity lift, but some simply jumped out of the Lich's open troop bay, using jet packs to slow their fall. Grunts, Elites and Jackals sprang into action, firing bolts of energy, plasma and needle fire at them. Most of the enemy combatants took cover behind human vehicles, and as the adrenaline kicked in, Jake took half a second to make sense of the chaos let loose in the last three seconds.

About 100 metres away down the street, the bulk of the enemy were camped behind cars, firing increasingly accurately at the divided group; he and Kovic were on the South side of the street, the Marine struggling to get to his feet within the grocery store, preparing to take a firing position in the window. He was crouched outside the store's window, looking across the street to Haverson, Sabina and the Doc; they were pinned down by the bulk of the enemy fire, stuck behind a newsstand that wasn't going to take many more plasma shots before it melted completely. Sabina was forcing Martinez as low as possible, and had swapped to her MA5B to lay down what suppressive fire she could against the onslaught. Haverson was, to his credit, also squeezing off a few rounds with his M6G towards the enemy. He was wondering where Sara has disappeared to, but the sharp crack of a Sniper rifle from his 5 o'clock and the wet thwack and accompanying scream from the enemy lines answered that question.

His objective became clear; lay down suppressive fire so that Martinez's lot could escape into the school on the North side of the street. He turned to Kovic and yelled "Suppressive fire!", then swivelled on the spot, raised his assault rifle and let rip. The familiar feeling of recoil calmed him down, and he coolly took down target after target, swapping magazines with a polished efficiency. The suppressed staccato of the ODST's M7S added to the din, and the steady crack of the Sara's sniper acted at the drumbeat to this cacophony of war.

Jake spotted several enemies go down without their direct intervention, and the echoing shots of several other sniper rifles confirmed his suspicions that Fireteam Resistance had added their firepower to the engagement.

"Sabina, how's it looking over there?" He asked while slotting his third magazine into place, pulling back the charging handle to cycle the first round into the chamber. "Can you move the asset?"

"Negative, fire's too heavy, popping smoke!" She said, and he saw out of the corner of his eye the swinging motion of her arm as she tossed a smoke grenade perfectly into place midway between them and their attackers, right in the middle of the street.

He tried to move over to her, but heavy plasma fire cut through the billowing smoke, indicating that the Lich must have been equipped with some kind of thermal optics, and he was forced to stay in cover behind the mutilated and melted sports car.

"We're moving!" Sabina called out, and through the thin trails of smoke sneaking up the street, he saw the figure of the Spartan, the spook and the Doc duck into the relative safety of the school.

"Doc's clear" Sara announced "We need to move, rendezvous at Nakatomi Plaza, it'll be easier if we split up, force the covenant to divide their resources."

"Copy that" He said, throwing a couple of M9 fragmentation grenades to discourage further advances by the aliens. Random plasma and needle fire was still emerging from the smoke, and Jake vaulted over the low window sill into the store beside Kovic, moving away from the street further into the store.

"I'll see you at the RV point." Sara said, and Sabina's acknowledgement light turned green to confirm. He activated his, and then turned from the frozen produce aisle towards the back of the shop.

"So then" Kovic said, reloading his SMG "The Spartan and the Helljumper, story writes itself"

They advanced through the empty building, past the surprisingly un-looted shelves of breakfast cereal, frozen Moa steaks and baby formula. They snuck through the employees' only door into the warehouse at the back of the shop, and made their way towards the loading bay at the very back of the room. According to map data downloaded from the city's SUPERINTENDANT class AI, the loading bay led into a backstreet, from which they would have to pass through four more buildings to reach the relative safety of Nakatomi Plaza.

It was as they were moving past the floor-to-ceiling crates of consumer electronics that Jake first felt something was wrong; a momentary flash on his motion sensor, and the feeling that they were being hunted crept up on him. He held up his fist in a non-verbal gesture to halt, and scanned the darkened room; nothing moved, no sounds echoed in from the outside world, no humming of power generators, nothing.

Then, a scuffing noise, barely audible to the human ear, but easily picked up by his helmet's sensitive microphones and his acute hearing. A knot of dread tightened in his stomach, and he turned the flashlights on his rifle and helmet off, motioning for the ODST to do the same.

"What's wrong?" Kovic whispered

"Get ready for a fight" He responded, gulping "We're not alone"


	3. Chapter 3

**Dr Salvia Martinez, city of Manassas, Reach, 20:07, 15** **th** **August 2552, (17 Hours before Spartan deployment)**

For the second time that day, Salvia Martinez regained consciousness, wincing as the sharp pain in her shoulder intensified. She looked around blearily, taking in her surroundings and clutching her arm; she'd felt the limb pop out of socket, but her range of motion indicated that it had been repositioned, albeit rather roughly. She probed the area with her fingers, gritting her teeth. Her arm wold be fine, but she couldn't move it very much without excruciating pain.

She was sitting in what looked to be an abandoned restaurant, the black and white chequered tiling cool beneath her, and all the tables and furniture had been pushed up against each of the four walls. There was no one around, so she got unsteadily to her feet, suppressing the fresh bolts of pain from her various injuries. She hobbled over to the nearest table and ripped the tablecloth from it, using her vague knowledge on a health & safety course taken two years ago to fashion a makeshift sling out of the fabric, tightening the knot with her teeth.

She moved towards the door to the street, wanting to find the others, but before she could make it halfway across the room, a husky voice growled from far behind her, and she froze instinctively.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you" The voice warned, and she turned around on the spot to face the source, a heavily armoured Orbital Drop Shock Trooper, his matte-black armour almost melding his form with the shadows at the far back of the restaurant. "Don't take another step towards that door, that is, if you like your legs intact."

"What are you talking about?" She whispered, hairs on the back of her neck standing up in protest.

"There's a claymore mine set up under one of them tables, business end's pointin' right at the doorway." The man's Texan drawl added an off putting laid-back note to his proclamations of death, and he walked slowly forward, cradling a rifle in his hands. "That wake you up somethin' fierce?"

She nodded

"Good, then come with me, quick as you can" He said gruffly, turning and disappearing into the shadows of the restaurant's kitchens. She followed him hesitantly, through the room and through a rear door into an emergency stairwell, ascending a dozen or more flights of stairs while the lights above them flickered in correspondence to the sound of distant explosions. As they ascended, a much closer noise drifted into focus, the steady and relentless cracking of a sniper's rifle.

"This way" The ODST grunted, barging his way through the door on the 14th floor and into a corridor. She followed him into one of the apartments, whose outer wall had been hit by some sort of projectile, which had torn a jagged 4 foot hole in the wall starting at floor level. The wind whistled outside and she could see the streets far below through the hole. In front of this hole was a pair of ODSTs, both lying prone facing the open air, one clutching a set of tripod-mounted binoculars to his face, the other seemingly wrapped around the sleek form of a SRS-99 Sniper Rifle. As they walked past them, she heard the spotter calling out targets;

"Elite hiding behind a tanker, 1.2 kilometres distant, wind speed 12, mark"

"Mark" The sniper responded, and fired. She was very thankful for her reactive ear plugs, because the rifle's deafening rapport was a little more than a cough to her protected ears.

"You got 'em, target down, Jackal sharpshooter, in cover behind the mailbox, 1.3…." the spotter continued, trailing off as they got further away towards the kitchen of the apartment.

"… if we cut across the municipal park towards the university, could we get through to the evac zones" She heard Haverson's voice, strained and tired.

"No way, enemy snipers in these buildings here and here would spot us for sure, we'd be right in their killzone, we've already lost three men in that area." A calm voice responded, almost drowned out by the continuous tinny voices coming through a radio set.

"Castle comin' in" Castle announced before pushing the kitchen door open and leading her through; the small room had been overtaken by military personnel, all of whom were occupied with hastily set up control stations, computers mounted on folding chairs around the edge of the room, most of them were talking on headsets hurriedly, directing units and co-ordinating movements and support, fluidly dragging icons around their screens.

In the centre of this organised chaos was a low dining table, bereft of eating implements or place settings, being replace by a large holographic representation of the city's downtown area, with red and blue markers denoting enemy and friendly units in real time. Around this table, three men stood, gesturing towards various points of the map, talking in low voices. She immediately recognised the familiar face of Haverson, highlighting an open area to the south-west of them, the other two were a mystery, one was wearing the imposing body armour of an ODST and bore the rank of Sergeant on his lapel, the other was dressed in digital camouflage fatigues, a mixture of greys and whites in square patterns, much like the rest of the support staff in the room.

"Doctor, good to see you in one piece, this is Captain Brody of the 13th Infantry Division, Intelligence Corps" Haverson was quick on the introductions, first pointing at the spectacled soldier wearing fatigues, before waving his hand towards the ODST, who stood cross-armed and resolute. "And this is Sergeant Jackson, 405th ODST. Come join us."

She moved over to them, taking care not to trip over the maze of wires and cabling snaking around on the floor. "Please tell me there's an evacuation plan, because I'm getting pretty sick of getting knocked out today."

The ODST snorted behind his visor, and Haverson smirked slightly "We've been discussing that problem for the last two hours while you were out, and, well, how did you put it Jackson?"

"The only way you're getting out of this city is behind a god-damnded Spartan, or in a bodybag." He grunted. "Snipers to the south, enemy advancing from the North, and any air evac is out of the question."

She frowned, feeling like she was missing something "And why not?"

Haverson sighed "Because about 30 minutes after we had that run-in with the Banshee, a Covenant Corvette swooped in, go have a look outside."

Her heart fell, and it was with an awful sense of dread that she approached the window to her left, peering through the slightly opaque glass at the view of the financial district; there it was, the hulking silhouette of a SDV heavy corvette, not a major threat to most UNSC ships, but deadly to any ground forces in the city.

"Thing took out most of our Triple-A batteries before it got within a mile of the city limits, only thing we've got left is a unit out in the sticks, Nakatomi Plaza, but they're reporting heavy assaults by ground forces, so they're not going to last long." The Army Captain informed. "Right now, the Army's focussed on evacuation of UNSC assets before this city becomes another lake of glass. Last evac transport leaves at 27:00 from the Miriam Trust branch in the Old Town, get there and you have a chance."

The Captain highlighted the area on the map, and Haverson nodded curtly. "Thank you Captain, now that we're all mobile, we'll be out of your hair." The ONI officer saluted smartly, as did the ODST, and they led her out of the kitchen and back into the sniper's nest.

"Kovic, Edwards, get your gear, we're moving out." Jackson barked, and the soldiers rapidly disassembled their rifle and stowed it in a bag, following them closely as they left the Observation Post and descended to street level.

"Stick with me ma'am" Kovic said "We'll get you off planet, no problem."

"Where are we going?" She asked, already slightly out of breath as they high-tailed it down the stairs.

"Miriam Trust building downtown. It's the only evacuation centre that hasn't been hit yet, you two might have to ride along with some walking wounded, but it'll take you out of the city to FOB Willow, the Navy'll take it from there." Kovic responded.

"Outstanding" she muttered sarcastically as they thundered downwards. "I overheard talk of snipers covering the park?"

The ODST nodded "That's right, squad of Jackals with Beam Rifles, those things'll tear right through you. Luckily for you you're tagging along with two of the best snipers in the 405th. I give those Jackals 4-1 odds of not even finding out where we killed them from."

"Cut the chatter" Jackson barked, barging open an emergency exit at street level, swinging his rifle up and around to cover potential threats on the other side. The other ODSTs followed, and she heard the metallic clicking as they switched their respective safeties off, barely audible to her over her own pounding heartbeat.

"I'll stay with the Doctor and Corporal Kovic" Haverson announced, lagging behind the three other ODSTs, clutching his pistol tightly.

"Copy that, move up to the next intersection, keep a low profile, we don't want to draw any unwanted attention." Jackson said, his voice slipping into a neutral tone of a seasoned soldier.

They proceeded down the street, moving from car to car, minimising any time spent out in the open to minimise the chance of being spotted by any one of the dozen or so aerial patrols that she observed; smooth insect-shaped Covenant Phantoms circling lazily far above them. Her shoulder hurt with every step she took, but she gritted her teeth and powered through it, darting around the deserted streets like an animal avoiding a hunter. She felt as if there were eyes constantly watching her, some gut reaction screaming at her that they were being watched.

Ahead, Jackson held up a closed fist, then made a complex series of hand motions that the other ODSTs seemed to have no trouble understanding, as both Castle and Edwards slipped out of cover and into a nearby hospital building.

"What's going on" She whispered to Haverson

"They're moving into a better firing position to see and eliminate those Jackals." He replied, pointing ahead of them "You see the trees?"

She followed his finger and squinted, barely discerning the thin sliver of green amongst the shades of grey and mirrored glass. "I see it"

"Only way through to Miriam without running into a roadblock, and the bastards have got it covered. Hopefully that won't last too long though"

They waited in the almost silence, broken only by the creaks of their armour as they shifted on the spot, until a single burst of static cut through their comms, followed by a reciprocal burst. Within seconds, the air was filled with the meaty echoes of large-calibre rifle fire, maybe five or six shots in rapid succession. Then silence.

"All clear boss man" Castle's southern drawl came over the comms. "That's a squad of Jackal snipers missin' their brains."

"Good work, now pack up and get down here." Jackson spoke, shifting uneasily.

"Roger that, we're on our way- enemy Phantom inbound!" Castle's tone jumped to urgency as she saw one of the circling dropships swoop down onto the roof of the hospital and out of sight.

"Get out of there!" Jackson yelled, breaking cover and moving quickly towards the entrance, his boots pounding on the asphalt .

"Negative, they're in the stairwell" Edwards shouted, and the sound of heavy small arms fire started up from above them. She craned her head upwards, and spotted one of the windows in the hospital blow out, sending shimmering shards of broken glass raining down on them and accompanied by a high-pitched whining explosion.

"Plasmas, Edwards, you alright?" Castle asked, his voice barely audible over the racket in the background of automatic fire.

"I-I'm hit" the other ODST responded, sounding dazed.

"God damn it, hold on, we're coming" Jackson said, kicking in the door, before Haverson's steely tones cut through the comms.

"Negative Sergeant, we need to move out."

Jackson turned around "What?"

"We need to protect the asset. The snipers are down, we move for the extraction point now."

"Like hell we do, I'm not leaving them to die" Jackson screamed

"Get the fuck out of here boss, we'll hold 'em off, looks like an Elite Ultra, didn't get a good look, but he had some crazy armour." Castle reported. "Come get some you filthy alien shit-heads!"

"Fuck, fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!" Jackson exclaimed, kicking an abandoned briefcase with enough force to rip it open, scattering the contents around them.

"I'm sorry Sergeant, but we need to move." Haverson ordered.

The ODST took a second to compose himself, then straightened up and marched onward towards the park without saying a word.

"Come on Doc, we're not waiting around for those Covenant to find us." Haverson said softly, his face etched with yet more suppressed grief.

"The most important thing now is getting to the extraction point, we're not letting them die for nothing."

They moved onwards away from the building, and she only looked back for a brief second and with a heavy burden on her shoulders as the gunfire stopped.

 **Special Operations Officer Sefa 'Rodumee**

As he turned over the body of the second human soldier, he marvelled again at how much like insects they looked, with hard black outer shells and soft, squishy internals. For humans, these two had put up a spirited defence of their position. He counted 12 dead Unggoy and two of his best Lieutenants sprawled across the floor, their blood leaving a sickly scent in the air.

"Commander, the human scientist is not here." One of his warriors told him, growling discontentedly at the prospect that their prize had slipped out of their grasp.

"Such a waste of fine Sangheili blood" He mused, leaning down to each of his fallen brothers and uttering the traditional mourning rite.

" _A Warrior from birth, a Warrior in death._

 _May the light of the Great Journey guide your passage into the beyond._

 _And may honour be kept among your Clan until the end of times"_

His brothers joined him, but as soon as the prayer was finished, he was back focussed on the task set to him by the noble Hierarch.

"Send their bodies back to their homes for proper burials, leave the Unggoy." He barked, striding over towards the shattered window and looking out over the city. The Urban sprawl reminded him of his home Keep, and he quickly suppressed the pangs of homesickness that welled up from inside.

"As you command" the warrior confirmed, leading a trio of Sangheili in carefully removing the fallen, barging past the cluster of Unggoy that had congregated in the centre of the large room, playing some childish game that Sefa did not understand.

"What are your orders sir?" His second-in-command asked, jaws flared wide in disgust that Sangheili blood had been spilled by the infidels.

"The humans protecting our prize will have scattered like rats by now, fleeing as cowards do." He growled "They will attempt to leave the city. We must not allow this. Where is the nearest concentrated human presence?"

"A financial institution about three kilometres away" he replied "Many Unggoy and Kig-Yar units have fallen trying to assault their position."

He narrowed his eyes, snorting amusedly. "Warriors, return to the ship, let us see how the humans fare against Sangheili blades!"

There was a roar of assent from his Sangheili, and they turned to walk back up the stairs to the roof. He stopped in the doorway and looked down at the mutilated corpse of one of the human soldiers. Next time, there would be no Sangheili blood shed.

 **Salvia Martinez, Miriam Trust building, 22:58 (14 hours before Spartan deployment), Reach**

"We need to get out of here. Now." Haverson muttered weakly after he had finished throwing up, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve.

"I…" She muttered, looking around her, not quite taking it in; the evacuation zone was gone. Utterly destroyed, sandbags split and burst, plasma scoring everywhere, the floor awash with a mixture of dried and semi-congealed blood, the thin coating only broken by the countless spent shell casings littering the ocean of blood. Stretchers were upended, broken and thrown aside like toys.

Then there were the bodies. Dozens of them, some intact, others barely recognisable, ripped apart and strewn around. As their group slowly stumbled around the square in a daze, she noticed some of the bodies were left in the spots where they'd died, one Marine was slumped over a mounted machine gun, two men in military fatigues she found shielding a wounded comrade, all three of them still and ashen.

The air was thick with smoke, billowing out of the flaming wreckage of a pelican dropship, the bright red cross painted on its side peeling as it was licked by flame. The stench of death was in the air too, the sickly sweet aroma of spilt blood mixed with the bitter taste of cordite and tang of discharged plasma weaponry.

"Hey, listen up, this location is blown, we're out of here. Grab any ammo you can find, these guys won't need theirs." Haverson ordered, patting down one of the fallen with a disgusted look on his face.

She turned from him, feeling like she might throw up herself, and hear the sounds of scuffling echoing around the tall buildings around them, coupled with pained grunts and swearing. She whipped her head round and saw Jackson punch Haverson cleanly in the jaw, a wild look in his eyes as the two men went down swinging at each other.

"jesus fuckin' Christ, what the fuck's wrong with you sarge!?" Kovic yelled as he waded in and dragged the ODST off of the ONI officer.

"Show some fucking respect!" Jackson bellowed, straining to get free and throw another punch "You cold-hearted ONI fuck! These men aren't even cold yet and you want to strip them bare like a god-damned vulture!"

Haverson wiped a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth, getting to his feet and spreading his arms. "You want to take another swing at me? Do it. I won't stop you. Take a couple more for free. But that doesn't change the fact that if we stay here, we die. You think I want to do this? I hate doing this, I hate myself for doing this, but we don't have the luxury of a choice right now, we have to get out of here and survive, and our only option is to collect as much ammunition here and get the fuck out of here." He looked defeated, but she could see in his eyes there was a hint of steely determination underneath it all.

Jackson slumped slightly, then brushed Kovic off of him and walked away from the lieutenant, kicking a discarded helmet in anger.

Haverson went back to the dead Marine, relieving him of his rifle and ammunition before moving over to her, pale and dejected. "How you holding up Doc?"

She shrugged weakly "I don't know. I should be in shock right now, but I'm having a hard time accepting this is real."

"You get that." He said, ratcheting the bolt on his newly acquired weapon habitually. "Some get angry like the Sergeant, some go numb like you, and some, who've seen it all before worse, just move on and try not to think about it too much. It never leaves you though."

She nodded "I can guess which one you fall in to."

He grimaced "Let's get moving, covenant could be watching."

"Yes sir" Kovic said from the wreckage of a Warthog, jogging over alongside Jackson, who didn't say a word behind the visor.

"Where are we going?" She asked

"Anywhere but here" Haverson replied, consulting his map of the city on his data pad. "The Intelligence Officer said that Nakatomi plaza still has AAA emplacements, that's our best shot to get you off-world, so that's where we'll go."

"I'll be glad to see the last of this place." She said, shuddering.

"You and I both, let's move out." Haverson said, shouldering his weapon and walking briskly to the north out of the square. "I'll take point, Kovic, stay with the Doc, Jackson, cover the rear."

She fell into step with the ODST, their footfalls echoing around the skyscrapers and abandoned cars. Maybe it was something to do with the overwhelming dose of death she'd just been subjected to, but she couldn't help seeing moments of life frozen in the quiet chaos around her; the half-smoked cigarette dropped onto the pavement next to the shattered screen of an expensive Chatter device portraying the life of a financier wearing a grey suit, the filthy bedroll alongside a bottle of cheap whiskey in an alcove telling the sad tale of a homeless man down on his luck. She didn't know if these stories were true, or even close to reality, but she hoped they were.

Somewhere in this ghost of a city, she could still feel the echoes of normal life. So much had changed in such a short period of time for her, that life felt far behind her, a distant memory of normality. But even then, they had still been at war with the Covenant. They had burned hundreds of human colonies, eradicating billions. A very cynical part of her appreciated how effective the UNSC's censors were at playing down the dire situation that humanity was in.

"So what does an ONI attaché do exactly?" Kovic broke the ponderous silence that had descended on them, speaking in low tones so as not to include the Lieutenant or Sergeant in their discussion.

"If I told you I'd have to kill you." She responded, half-smiling at the cliché-ness of her rehearsed reply.

"Naturally." He nodded "But seeing as we are both likely to die in the next 12 hours, I was just wondering what the pay is like, I'm thinking of diversifying my portfolio"

"Less than you'd think, more than it needs to be." She shrugged "I'm not in it for the money."

"Then what are you in it for? What's driving you Doc?"

She didn't answer for a long while "I'm trying to make a difference. Isn't that what we all want? Why you signed up?"

He sighed "I signed up for the marines because I got into some trouble with the law. My choices were either carry on down my path and end up dead or in jail, or join up for the only business in town that would accept someone with my record; the Maine Corps."

"What kind of trouble, if you don't mind me asking?" She timidly posed, suddenly fascinated with this man who had up until now just been muscle in a suit of armour.

"Nothing major, but enough to limit my job options. Then my brother got sick, degenerative Gladstone's disease." He sighed "My brother, he's the golden boy, smarter than Shaw, got a scholarship to Sydney, but couldn't afford his treatments on his own salary. Me signing up for the marines was the only option, and not one I enjoyed being forced to choose."

"I'm sorry." She herself had graduated from Sydney Educational Institute a decade ago, and knew that to get in you needed to pass the battery of enrolment exams and tests. "Where is he now?"

"Truth told Doc, I have no idea. Haven't spoken to him in years. But I worked hard in the marines, worked my way into ODST, and I don't regret a thing." He tilted his visor towards her, gesturing to her with his gloved hand. "I put him before me then, just like I'm putting you before me now. All of us are."

"But I'm just an engineer, a dozen people would fill my position within hours if I don't make it out of here." She protested, feeling uneasy about having her life valued above someone else's.

"That's not for me to say. I just know that if ONI…" He nodded towards Haverson "… goes to this much trouble to get you out of here, you're worth something to them."

She slipped back into silence as they marched through the gridded streets towards the residential suburbs.

"Keep walking Doc." Kovic whispered, his voice suddenly on edge. "Don't look around, don't tense up, just keep walking."

"What's going on?" She whispered back, never more conscious of her body's pose and movements.

"We're being followed." He responded. "Sarge, give the signal."

"On three." Jackson's gravelly voice broke through on the comms.

"RUN" Kovic yelled, forcefully pushing her ahead of him as she broke out into an undignified sprint. She looked back at their pursuant, and saw both Jackson and Kovic swinging around to face an empty street.

"Doc, get to me!" Haverson yelled, adopting a firing stance and aiming squarely behind her.

"Come out you dog-breathed piece of shit!" Jackson yelled, swinging his rifle back and forth.

"What they hell are they yelling about?" She panted as she drew up to the Lieutenant. "I don't see anything?"

"Lieutenant, move!" Jackson yelled over his shoulder. "We'll flush him out at catch up to you!"

Haverson didn't have time to respond before the Sergeant was dead. As if puppeted by an invisible hand, Jackson was bodily lifted off of the ground by his torso into the air. The only things which disputed the supernatural effect she observed was the chilling scream of agony escaping the ODST's lips and the twin blades of plasma protruding from his spine, just under his chest.

"Go!" Jackson wailed, and she watched, transfixed by horror as he dropped his weapon and fumbled with his bandolier, pulling the pin on a frag grenade and punching it into the open jaws of the Elite that had speared him with an energy sword, which was now visible as the active camouflage de-shrouded from around it.

"Contact!" Kovic yelled as he dove to the side away from Jackson, rolled into a firing stance and opened fire on one of the three Elites rapidly becoming visible right behind them. Haverson opened up as well, causing the shields of the rear elite to spark and shimmer.

Plasma fire splashed over the road around them, and Haverson pushed her out of the way of a bolt of blue death, and she sprawled out on the ground, wincing as her shoulder flared with pain. She looked up in time to see the grenade detonate, evaporating the Elite and the Sergeant in milliseconds as the Elite's plasma grenades were set off in a chain reaction. She briefly saw Kovic thrown bodily towards them by the blast, and Haverson come skidding to a halt about 4 metres away from her.

She coughed and spluttered, shaking the stars from her eyes as she tried to get her bearings and stop her ears from ringing. Her gaze was drawn to the bright white electrifying blade moving slowly towards the Lieutenant. Her vision cleared slightly to reveal that one Elite had survived the blast, trailing a large line of rich purple blood towards them, limping heavily.

"Haver…" She tried to say, but the smoke caught her throat and sent her into a coughing fit. The Lieutenant stirred slightly, coughing weakly.

The Sangheili warrior drew closer, and as he did so she could see by his exuberant armour colourations and variants that he was no ordinary soldier. He loomed over Haverson, growling loudly, and the Lieutenant began scrabbling for his rifle, which was nowhere in sight. The Elite yelled something in his own language and raised his sword arm to strike, starting to deliver what she was sure was a very damning and righteous speech in his own language.

Her pistol. As if in a dream, she fumbled with the holster on her waist, awkwardly rolling off of it to allow her to remove the bulky sidearm. She shakily flipped off the safety and took aim.

She didn't really aim. She just pointed the barrel vaguely at the alien's head and pulled the trigger. The unfamiliar recoil threw off the aim on her next shot, but she quickly remembered her training and compensated, taking better aim and driving home 7 shots from the powerful magnum. 3 of them missed outright, three struck the Elite in the chest and drained what little of his shielding was left. The final round drove itself through its neck and up through its lower skull on the other side, killing the dominating combatant instantly.

It fell heavily to the ground, the momentum imparted on it by the rounds causing it to topple away from her and the ONI officer. As the Elite slumped, so did she, allowing her arm to lower as she leant back flat on her back and breathed slowly and heavily, remarking at the sheer unlikeliness of their success in that situation.

It felt like an eternity before she felt a hand shake her shoulder, and she opened her eyes to see herself reflected in Kovic's visor leaning over her.

"Not just an engineer, huh?"

She squinted, coughing. "What?"

"You're also a guardian angel and a crack shot. Can you move?"

She tested that for herself, slowly getting to her feet with the help of the ODST and turning to face Haverson, who himself was on his feet and limping towards them.

"I guess we're even, as long as you're only counting today" His pained smile flashed briefly across his face.

She started laughing in spite of her situation, causing yet another coughing fit.

Kovic slapped her on the back "How does it feel to down your first gator?"

"Climactic" She responded once her breathing had settled.

"Sounds about right."

Haverson located and retrieved his rifle as well as Kovic's SMG, handing the latter over to its owner. "Come on, Nakatomi Plaza isn't getting any closer."

"Yes sir." Kovic looked back at the remains of the rather one-sided firefight "Best thing we can do for Jackson's memory is get the hell out of here." He turned away and lead her away from the scene after the Lieutenant. "Come on Doc, we're going to get you to Nakatomi if it kills me."

 **Sabina-211, Primary Education Facility 2401-E,** **August 16** **th** **2552, 17:01 Zulu Time**

She hated schools. They always reminded her of the first few days at boot camp, the confusion, loneliness, melancholy. She'd just been taken from her parents and friends and thrust into a strict military education, lessons every day from 9-5, with calisthenics and marches bookending it. Now she realised that they were trying to keep the young Spartans' minds occupied to keep them from thinking of home, but it didn't make remembering that time in her life any easier. In fact it added a touch of cold bitterness to her recollections, the knowledge that they were all just being controlled and manipulated to maximise team cohesion and productivity.

It was as Martinez, Haverson and her ran through the echoing corridors of Primary Education facility 2401-E that these memories jostled for position in her mind, and she was forced to shove them all to the back as she retained focus on her current task; survival.

"This way" She grunted as they turned into the canteen, the thin door offering little resistance to the force of 500kg of Mjolnir powered armour barrelling through it. Her HUD showed their general direction as North, and the schematics downloaded off of the city's SUPERINTENDANT AI showed that behind the school was a playing field, across which was a subway entrance which they could use to walk the normally trivial distance of three city blocks to Nakatomi Plaza undetected by the Covenant, who were right on their heels.

As they sprinted down the canteen's length, past banches and tables, some meals left half eaten, faint red dots appeared on her motion tracker up ahead. She slowed down to let the other two catch up.

"We've got contacts in the next block. Exit's to our left as we move through these doors, but they'll see us leave, and there's not much in the way of cover out on the field." Martinez looked beaten.

"So what do we do?" The ONI Lieutenant asked, sidearm already clenched in his hands.

"You do nothing until I give the word. Stack up on the exit, I'll move through the floors above us and draw their attention. When I give the word, you sprint across the field, out of the gate and into the subway on the street. I'll clean up here and follow you through." She reloaded her shotgun as she spoke, happy to see her ammunition counter on her HUD reach full. "Questions?"

"Just about a million, but I guess not" Martinez quipped, shaking her head slowly.

"Smart woman" She replied, raising her weapon and moving slowly through the doors out of the canteen and into the dimly lit corridor. The other two followed her closely, both had their handguns at the ready and both were holding them like amateurs. She often wondered who taught normal ONI officers or attachés to shoot, because their technique was sloppier than the average Navy dinner.

Lockers lined either side of them, and at a junction she waved her arm to indicate for the others to head off to the left, which they did promptly. Her mission was going to be a lot more simple; shoot as many covvies as possible, cause as much chaos as possible, and leave no witnesses.

She suppressed a grin as she broke into a run, activating her suit's radio jammer to prevent whatever covenant foot soldiers were in the area from calling for help. As her pounding footsteps resonated through the building, she could see her motion sensor contacts react, closing in on her location like flies on shit. She took a set of stairs four at a time, bursting out into a second floor corridor and ducking into a classroom.

She snaked a fibre-optic camera underneath the doorway and out into the hallway. On connecting her helmet feed to it, she saw a pair of Sangheili warriors charge through the same stairwell she had, wielding plasma rifles and carbines. They began to move towards her classroom, and were joined by a half-dozen Unggoy, chittering and barking amongst themselves, excitedly hunting down the Demon. They would get their wish soon enough.

She slowly stood up against the doorway, her body surging with adrenaline, waiting for the Sangheili to open the door.

The handle turned. She swung round in front of the door and unleashed a jackhammer kick into the door, crumpling the metal and firing the metal portal outwards into the alien, who was thrown along with it into the bank of lockers on the other side of the hall.

She followed suit, rounding the corner and pumping an 8 gauge shell into the other Sangheili, breaking its shields and sending spurts of purple blood flying. She followed up with another round to the head, neutralising the alien combatant before the grunts had had time to even raise their weapons, let alone fire them.

As the second shotgun shell clattered to the ground, silence fell upon the corridor. She looked at the group of grunts, every one of them too stunned by the swift disposal of their two leaders to react.

"Boo." She said calmly, turning her helmet lamps onto their full brightness.

The gaggle of diminutive aliens turned tail and ran, some abandoning their weapons entirely, others scrambling over their comrades to get away from her, screaming for their lives and waddling away as fast as their little legs could carry them.

Even as she savoured that moment of childish mischief, she saw multiple contacts rapidly approaching her position on her motion tracker. Things were about to get busy.

She fired a couple of warning shots after the Grunts and turned to run back down the corridor away from them. She could hear the panic she'd incited, the high pitched squealing of grunts echoing after her, the lower snarls and growls of Sangheili as they hurried to work out her location.

"Find the demon!" She heard one Elite roar, the translation software doing very well to encapsulate the venom in its voice. "It went to the upper level!"

She skidded to a halt just next to a door to another stairwell, listening to the pounding footsteps of another combatant heading directly towards her. She waited patiently for her prey to approach, and was rewarded when the door burst open to reveal another Elite. She grabbed the elongated barrel of its carbine and wrenched it from its grip, using it as a club to deliver a crushing blow on the alien's skull before tossing it aside.

The Sangheili, stunned by the ferocity of the attack, retreated back into the stairwell, reaching for its Energy Sword with one hand and raising its other to fend off further blows. She pressed her advantage, lashing out with her right foot and snapping its left leg like a toothpick. As it howled in pain, she brandished her razor-sharp combat knife and drove it home in the creature's exposed neck, lashing out one last time to push the Elite over the banister on the upper level, sending it down to land heavily onto the stone steps in a rapidly widening pool of its own blood.

"That's for Reach" She said calmly, stowing her combat blade and rushing off again down the corridor.

 **Dr Martinez**

"What the hell is going on up there?" She whispered intensely. Her and Haverson had heard multiple gunshots, screaming, what sounded like a grenade detonating and a barrage of plasma fire from other places in the building.

He shook his head "I don't know, but I feel bad for the Covenant."

"Shouldn't we go, while they're busy with her?"

"Not until the Spartan tells us to." He insisted.

"By the time she does that, they'll have radioed for h…" She trailed off, suddenly cut off by the deafening silence.

"Go, run now!" The Spartan's voice echoed off of the walls.

They were both spurred into action, pushing open the door and beginning their mad dash across the field. Her breath filled her ears, surpassed only by the thundering of her heartbeat as she followed the Lieutenant towards their goal; a metal gate on the opposite side of the field, about 400 metres away.

She felt something whizz by her head, and saw dirt being kicked up ahead of her, purple-tinged needle-like projectiles detonating on contact, which only spurred her onwards faster. She craned her neck around to look behind them, and saw the two-storey school building falling behind her quickly, the source of the enemy fire uncertain.

"Where is she?" She gasped in between breaths, scanning her vision for any sign of the imposing Spartan.

Her question was answered moments later when a small section of a second-storey window exploded outwards in a shower of glass, brick and metal. Within the debris, she could clearly see the distinctive outline of the Spartan as she powered out of the building, landing squarely on the asphalt playground and dragging something in her left hand. She was forced to look around to check where she was going, but when she looked back the Spartan was sprinting at unnatural speed towards them, having discarded what she now saw was the broken and mangled body of a Jackal sniper behind her.

"Doc!" Haverson yelled, and she ran through the open gate and into the street, stopping, bent double to catch her breath.

The Spartan came only a second later, dust and debris still rolling off of her shields, which flickered a dull yellow.

"The Metro, now." The super-soldier ordered, and practically dragged her and the Lieutenant across the street and into the underground entrance.

"I agree Lieutenant" She panted.

"What's that Doc?" He responded, still breathing heavily.

She laughed, body buzzing off adrenaline "I feel sorry for the Covenant too"

 **Jacob-209**

"Outstanding" Kovic mumbled. "Now what?"

He didn't respond for a minute, calibrating his motion sensors to detect even the slightest movement. "We get through this. Stay close to me, call out anything you see, shimmering in the air, anything."

"Copy that" Kovic said, and they started slowly moving through the store.

His head pounded with his own heartbeat. He forcibly slowed his breathing, heightening his senses to any input which would give their hunters away. They crept past ceiling-high shelves of goods, from laundry detergent to the latest PlayBox VR entertainment system, all packaged and ready to be stacked into the shop behind them.

He picked up at least four hostiles within a 25m radius, their icons flickering as the motion detection system struggled to accurately display their exact location. Him and the ODST slowly danced around the patrolling hostiles, avoiding their direct lines of sight, ducking behind crates and darting across walkways. They approached the loading bay door and ran into a little problem; an Elite was standing right in front of the rolling shutters, its outline barely visible due to the combined camouflage system and dark interior. They were crouched behind a forklift about five metres away from it.

"We've got to take him out." He said calmly, noting the three other contacts approaching their general position slowly. He pulled the pin on a flashbang grenade. "When this goes off, slot him."

"My pleasure" kovic muttered, taking aim with his suppressed SMG.

Jake waited precisely 2 seconds and then tossed the concussive grenade, not at the enemy in front of them, but away into the opposite corner of the warehouse. The device didn't have time to hit the ground before it detonated, giving off a deafening bang and setting off a slower burning magnesium compound-based fire, blinding any who looked at it. The enemies moved towards it, shouting in their thick language at each other.

Right on cue, the quietened sputter of Kovic's weapon blended into the background noise as he unloaded an entire clip of armour piercing ammunition into the barely visible Elite. The energy shields petered out of existence and the shimmering air materialised alongside spurts of bright purple blood as the alien went down.

"Exit's clear, move now."

The rest of the enemy didn't have a chance to figure out what had happened before Jake was sprinting past it to the loading bay door, dropping his weapon and squatting, jamming his fingers underneath the heavy metal, he wrenched the door open about three feet, enough for Kovic to roll under quickly, grabbing the Spartan's rifle as he went. Jake swung himself under the door, out into a dark alleyway.

The sudden influx of light had obviously alerted the rest of the Elites, as their confused shouting took on a more fevered pitch and their motion tracker icons moved towards them.

"Move, down the alley, stick to the shadows" He ordered, accepting his rifle back and crouching in between two dumpsters next to the loading bay. "When I say, make some noise."

The ODST sprinted away from him, taking refuge inside a doorway.

The first of three Sangheili walked carefully past him, not spotting him under the small pile of garbage bags he had pulled down on top of himself. As the third one made its way past him, he buzzed once on his comms, which triggered the loud whistle coming from kovic's direction.

He burst from his hiding place, whipping out his razor-sharp combat knife as he did so, drawing it forcefully along the back of the trailing combatant's left leg, slicing through flesh and splitting blood vessels. As the enemy went down, screaming in pain, he swept his assault rifle up and began firing, finishing off the wounded elite quickly and sparking the shields of the next one.

The middle Elite reacted quickly, raising its plasma rifle and loosing a burst of plasma which blossomed over the Spartan's own energy shields, draining them significantly and pushing him back slightly. One burst of plasma from the other Elite drained his shields to almost nil and splashed over his rifle, easily melting the weapon and rendering it useless.

Jake then did something really stupid; he charged the aliens. Dropping his warped rifle, he punched the first Elite in the throat, using its body as a shield against the other's fire. As his target choked for air and spat blood on to his visor, he drove his knife into its chest and deftly ripped the warrior's Energy Sword from its holster on its hip.

He then propped the dying Elite's body up, carrying it forward with him as he charged the last hostile, which struggled to get a clean shot on the Spartan behind his downed comrade.

His shield found one last burst of strength as they went, and in one final act of spite, fired his plasma rifle blindly. With the weapon jammed in between them, there was only one way the shots could go.

He felt burning, searing pain flare up in his left thigh, but he suppressed it as he pushed the Elite into his ally, using the brief moment of incapacitation to activate the stolen sword, forcing the twin blades of crackling, pure white energy through the pair of them. Shields flared and dissipated, weapons dropped to the floor, dying gurgles rattled on, and then it was all over.

He stood up from the tangles heap of limbs, his left leg shuddering and smarting as he did so. Upon a cursory examination he discovered a blackened streak on his leg. His suit's diagnostics told him that he was still vacuum proof, but the sheer heat from the plasma had burned the top of his thigh. He breathed heavily and walked towards the ODST's position, stowing the handle of the energy sword onto his thigh holster.

"Holy shit" Kovic muttered "You okay?"

He nodded, reaching around to his back to grab his DMR, flicking the safety off. "We need to move, someone will come looking for them."

They jogged down the length of the alley and into another building.

"Keep up Corporal." He said, wincing at his injury "We've a long way to go yet."

 **Sara**

"Where have you gone now?" She muttered, eyes glued to her rifle's scope. She'd been waiting in her static post in the 2nd floor of an apartment block for 25 minutes, waiting for the last Elite from the unit sent to hunt her down to round the corner.

For the last couple of hours since they'd been forced to split up, she'd been calmly and carefully picking off members of the enemy squad, remaining in the shadows and using hit-and run techniques to ensure maximum damage dealt and minimum chance of detection. She'd started with the Grunts, waiting until they were bunched up and then shooting squarely into one of the methane tanks with an Armour Piercing round, igniting the flammable gas inside. Their numbers were reduced significantly with each attack, and the fear and panic instilled in them had more than the desirable effect. She even observed one Unggoy apparently pleading with the ranking Elite to call off the hunt, but the towering alien threw his inferior aside and barked orders to resume the search.

She never took more than one shot from any one location, and each shot found its mark. Once the Grunts had been dealt with, she moved onto the Elites. One by one they were struck down as if by some vengeful deity, the sounds of their lifeless corpses hitting the floor preceding the sharp rapport of her weapon. Now it was just the Ultra left, and his time was soon approaching. In the last half an hour the sun had set enough for her to turn on her low-light and night vision filters, so now the area in which she predicted her target would appear appeared brightly lit to her eyes. She'd even baited the area, leaving a handful of spent 14.5 x 114mm casings on the ground along with a 24-hour ration bar. She was hoping that the distinctive aromas of the disgusting rations and cordite would at least interest the Elite. Just to be sure, she had fired a burst of fire from her M7 into the air to attract the unfortunate Sangheili into her trap.

She was tempted to give up and relocate as the thought that maybe the Elite had given up the hunt crossed her mind, but then movement in her periphery caught her eye, and she sprang into action. The flash of motion she'd noticed was not, as she'd intended, the result of the Ultra moving around the street corner 500 metres away, but said Ultra creeping around in the next apartment to her perch. A partial view of the alien's shoulder was visible through a scorched hole in the apartment wall, and it was through this that she dove as she unloaded with her SMG into its back, leaving her sniper rifle in the neighbouring domicile.

The Elite swung round, opening fire before it had had time to aim, spraying a rapid burst of blue plasma across the room from its Plasma Repeater. She rolled behind a couch and pushed off at the other end, diving into the kitchen as she loosed another burst of fire as its legs. The Ultra's shield flared into life, absorbing the rounds seemingly without cost.

It roared and burst into the room, and she barely had enough time to throw herself through another doorway before the spot she had been crouching in was burned away by incredibly rapid-fire plasma rounds. She contorted her body to spring backwards onto the wall right next to the doorway into the kitchen and waited for the Elite to come blustering through, which he did a second later, already firing his weapon into the room.

As he crossed the threshold, snarling something unintelligible, she pressed the muzzle of her SMG into its side and pulled the trigger, using her left hand to deliver a power-hammer punch to the Ultra's weapon, sending it clattering across the wooden floor and snapping several of his fingers in the process.

As the Elite's shields popped, she kicked its legs out from under it and delivered the fatal shots to the ugly creature's head. As it slumped to the ground and she reloaded, a patchy radio transmission came through, and she recognised the voice of whoever was in charge at Nakatomi Plaza.

"…. Anyone give assistance?... sniper fire on our western face, no clear line of sight…." The transmission was interrupted by static, but she risked breaking radio silence to respond.

"This is Spartan-170, I read you but you're breaking up, how copy?"

"Spartan? I need you to take out some Jackal snipers to our west, we can't get a clear shot at them without drawing a whole mess of beam rifle fire."

"Copy that, I'm within range of them" She responded, using data being sent to her HUD to estimate the rough location of the troublesome snipers. "Hold on Nakatomi, 170 out."

Technically speaking her rifle was only rated for a maximum of 2.3 kilometres, but she'd made some rather unique modifications to it, and she guessed that the Jackals' approximate distance from her of 2.5 clicks would be just about reachable if she could get a decent sightline. She grabbed her rifle and made her way out of the apartment block, scanning the nearby rooftops for a suitable, settling for a clock tower attached to the local UNSC recruitment centre.

The climb up the tower didn't take her long, her progress impeded only by a rather flimsy fire door which was 'unlocked' after three good kicks. As she set up position, she lamented the fact that she had no dedicated spotter with her. She set up the rangefinder next to her and laid out three magazines of APFDS ammunition within easy reach before she laid prone with her rifle and sighted up, starting with a lower magnification before honing in on the target building, scanning for any movement.

While she was doing this, her breathing was slow and deep, her mind a calm ocean as she entered a Zen state, focussing only on her targets and her actions. She identified her first victim and felt the familiar recoil of her weapon as she fired the first shot, compensating for wind speed and bullet drop instinctively. The Jackal went down in an explosion of blood, as did its 3 comrades in rapid succession. She exhaled as she reloaded, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, which was quickly replaced by a grimace as her long-range sensors picked up a flight of banshees rapidly approaching her position.

"Oh come on." She moaned to herself, rapidly altering her position to face the new threat, pumping two rounds into the centre of mass of the two leading fliers, each of which detonated in a flash of blue before plummeting into the streets below. The last Banshee rolled out of the way of its neutralised comrades and darted towards her tower, fuel rod canon charging, emitting a faint green glow as it hurtled towards her.

She grabbed her ammunition and spotter and hurried out of the open and into the stairwell, taking it four steps at a time, counting down in her head until the deadly explosive round hit.

Her count was off by a fraction of a second, and the round hit the tower's peak just as she hit the halfway point. The entire structure shook around her, and a significant amount of stonework and rubble cascaded down the stairs after her, coating her in dust and almost knocking her off balance. She tore out of the collapsing tower and out of the recruitment office onto the street, setting off in the direction of Nakatomi Plaza, which now loomed over her, blocking out the setting sun.

She looked behind her at the collapsed ruin that was the clock tower, stowing her rifle and shaking her head slightly as she moved off. If Spartans drank, she'd be expecting a whole crate from the guys at Nakatomi, and maybe a promotion. The night was still young.


	4. Chapter 4

**Sara**

"Spartan-170 to Fireteam Resistance, I'm approaching your position from the South-East, IFF tag is live." She calmly said over the radio, picking herself up from the dusty debris next to a destroyed building and jogging across the parking lot towards the foyer of the imposing Nakatomi Plaza residential complex, an enormous skyscraper which stood proudly among the other smaller buildings of the city's residential district. She had spent the last 20 minutes or so scouting the entrance to the building from a distance, observing the scorched walls surrounding the main entrance and the numerous alien corpses littered around the immediate area. The sun was just beginning to set, and the dying light of the day threw long amber-clad shadows up against the smooth steel and glass of the building. As she closed on the entrance, her thermal filters picked up the dozen or so heat signatures dotted around the lobby and her sensors registered the deactivation of three automated turrets in the same room.

She slowed to a walk as she passed through the doorway and stowed her SMG onto her thigh holster, glancing around at the assembled Marines quickly. They all seemed pretty badly beaten up, a couple of them had obvious wounds, blanketed in white field dressings, but all still held their weapons with steely determination. Her feet trailed through a sea of spent casings on the marble floor, scattering them. Several sandbag walls had been erected in the space, along with a couple of portable metal covers strategically placed, all pointing towards the doorway. Three complicated-looking gun turrets had been placed on the front desk of the lobby and it was around these devices that the highest concentration of casings could be found. The entire room had been practically demolished. There were scorch marks everywhere, and all along the back wall behind the desk needle rounds had embedded themselves in the information displays, huge tracts of brute spiker rounds in lines of automatic fire had impaled themselves in every wall.

A Marine pilot wearing a flight suit and full helmet vaulted the desk and came out towards her, holstering his sidearm and saluting.

"Ma'am, it's good to have you here, Lieutenant Danse is upstairs, follow me." He said, waving for her to follow him as he turned and walked briskly over to the elevator at the back of the room.

She followed, conscious of the may eyes on her as she went. Most personnel in the UNSC had never seen a Spartan in the flesh, so they tended to draw attention from the ranks wherever they went. She knew Jacob hated it, but she herself couldn't care less. She was here to do a job, to complete an objective, and if some guys stared at her for a bit, fine.

They entered the elevator. The doors slid closed and they began rising, accompanied by awkward and tinny renditions of Mozart. She'd once hear that elevator companies deliberately made the audio files on these things low quality to give it a more authentic feel. She'd also heard that the Navy did the same with its rations, so maybe there was some truth to it.

"You're the last one to arrive" The Corporal informed her "The other two arrived together about 30 minutes ago, everyone accounted for."

Much to her surprise, she felt a great deal of dread lift from her mind. She didn't realise how much she'd worried for the others. There had been so much activity on the streets, she had wondered how either of the other two, who were (unlike her) burdened with human baggage, could have avoided all that. She looked down at the pilot. He had accurately surmised that the Spartan would be worried about her comrades, and the fact that he had been right alarmed her slightly. She wasn't used to being understood by anyone other than other Spartans. She felt vulnerable. It was unsettling to say the least, and was not helped by the fact that it had been such an innocent act that had triggered her feelings.

"Thanks Corporal." She managed to mumble after a pause, and the relief of the elevator doors couldn't have come soon enough to dispel the bizarre circumstance she found herself in.

Once at the 50th floor, they disembarked and the Marine led her down narrow corridors past open doors to apartments. Each domicile housed at least a half a dozen soldiers in various states of health. Some flats had a dozen laughing men inside playing cards and smoking, while the next would be a wing of a makeshift field hospital. Sterile field generators chugged away in the centre of the room filled with wounded and a few medics hurriedly treating the most severely injured. The moans and occasional screams followed them long after they had passed out of earshot.

They appeared to be heading further down the hallway, but before they could get to their destination, the bulky form of Sabina filled the corridor in front of them, turning to face them.

"I'll take it from here Lieutenant" She said in her Slavic-accented voice, sublimed with a hint of force that only a fool would dare go against.

"Affirmative Petty Officer, I'll return to my post then." The soldier calmly accepted the order, even though he outranked both of them. There was a certain point when it came to Spartans that the chain of command became a little slanted.

"This way. Jake's making nice with some Marine Captain, trying to come up with a game plan for getting us out of the city." Sabina said as they walked, occasionally having to duck under doorframes.

"Who's 'us'?" She replied "As far as the mission goes, we just need to get Martinez out. Anyone else is just going to slow us down."

She shrugged, a feat notoriously difficult to perform in Mjolnir armour "Worst comes to worst, we'll cut these guys loose and hope they make it, but you and I both know that Jay's not leaving here without them."

"He'll make it work." She said calmly "Where's the Doc? I assume she made it here in one piece."

"She's here, thank you very much. Not that you can talk, getting here half an hour after us without the excuse of having to drag a civvie and a uniform with you." Sara could tell that she was smirking behind the visor. They had always kept a running score of who got there first to objectives, who got the highest kill count on the way there. "How many'd you get this time?"

"14. Plus three fliers, what did we say those were worth?" She asked

"Three each, but we established during Operation Trebuchet that you can't count the pilots as well."

"Ah, then 20, you?"

"Only 13." She mumbled. Sabina hated losing. "The Doc's through here."

They pushed through a doorway to a high-end apartment and made their way past the tastefully decorated open-plan kitchen and into the living room. On the sofa in front of the wall-mounted 100-inch TV was Kovic, helmet off, feet up on the coffee table, snoring loudly. At the dining table Martinez and Haverson sat drinking coffee and conversing in low tones. A Navy Corpsman sat next to the Doctor, holding her injured arm and gently manipulating the angle of each joint to check the range of motion. They looked round at the Spartans as they entered.

"How is she?" Sara asked the Corpsman, laying her rifle down on top of one of the kitchen's granite countertops.

"Not too bad, a little swelling around the joint, but no permanent damage." He assessed, letting his patient's arm go. He stood up from the table. "Well Doc, best of luck to you, I need to get back to triage."

He saluted Haverson, nodded to the Spartans and left, whistling tunelessly.

No sooner had the medic pushed through the door than Jake strode in, nodding to her in greeting. As soon as she saw him she knew something was wrong. For one thing, he was walking with a limp, probably due to whatever had caused large black scorch mark over his right thigh. But that concerned her little, if he was walking on it, he was fine. What worried her is the ever so subtle body language clues he was displaying, his neck under the bodysuit was tense, and he refrained from looking at the others in the room, just motioned the two Spartans to follow him as he strode through the room and into the bathroom.

She followed Sabina, closing the door behind them before turning to face them, opening a private Comm link between the three of them.

"What's got you in a huff?" Sab asked, tilting her head slightly.

"Tell you guys later, now we need to focus." He said "How do we get 50 men and ourselves out of the city while not getting killed in the process?"

She snorted "No way. We can get ourselves and the package out with few problems, hell we could even walk out of here, but an entire platoon?" She shook her head

"I have to say Jay, there's no simple way to do it, considering half of them can't walk and we don't exactly have the advantage of air support, or even any support at all." Sab admitted, sighing.

She nodded agreement "Precisely. Jake, even with CAS this would be a mammoth task, and we don't have a lot of time to organise-"

"Mammoth" Jake blurted out "Hold up." He fell silent, and she guessed that he was bringing up something on his helmet's HUD "Bingo. Oliphants."

He snapped his finger and shared his finding across all three of their displays, and a schematic diagram of an M310 Oliphant garbage truck, one of the many employed by the Manassas Waste Management Department to ferry garbage from the inner city to the processing plant in the next valley. The civilian variant of the UNSC's Elephant mobile assault platform had been widely adopted across UEG space, and were usually controlled by a city's Superintendent-class AI.

"What's your thinking?"

"We pack the Oliphants with wounded, drive them out of the city. With any luck the Covvies just think that they're automated, and if not, we'll have some anti-air support from the AAA on the roof here. We'll have to provide a distraction to draw fire away from the trucks and throw them off the trail." He said excitedly, bringing up maps of the city and overlaying various keys, one showing the location of the city's 28 Oliphants, one showing a circle around Nakatomi plaza indicating the effective range of the missile system on its roof.

"Jake, that's…" She began, wiping her HUD clear with a flick of the wrist.

"Inspired?" He interjected

"I was going to go with insane, but yeah, Inspired works too." She grimaced.

"We can make this work, I'm going to talk to the Captain, stay with the package, I'll be back soon." He said, practically running through the apartment back out into the corridor.

"This is a bad idea" She said to Sab, mentally listing through all the ways in which this half-plan could go wrong.

"Maybe, but these guys don't really have much of a chance without us. You've seen the state of the lobby, what happens when the covenant realise that three Spartans are holed up here? They'll throw everything they have against this place" Sabina responded calmly. "Besides, if it all goes wrong, we'll come up with a contingency that produces the best possible results for us and the package."

Sara said nothing, for now she was reassured that Sab remained as realistic as ever. The two Spartans re-joined the others in the apartment's living space, standing next to the kitchen table and awaiting Jake's return.

They waited for what seemed like an eternity, fending off questions from Martinez and Haverson until Jake returned, a fresh sense of urgency in his gait and tone.

"Everyone, up and ready, Doctor Martinez, you're with Haverson, Kovic and Sabina, Sara, with me." He ordered, spurring the room into life. Kovic grumbled about being woken up and picked up his rifle wearily, Martinez and Haverson looked like they were fit to burst with questions, but they held their tongues for now.

"The rest of you, through there, the Captain will brief you, we're headed out." He said, leading her back towards the elevators. The rest of their group headed in the opposite direction down the hallway.

"Mind telling me what we're doing?" She asked, staring at the back of the CPO's head

"We're the matador's red cape" He replied as they stepped into the elevator and the god-awful music started up again softly.

"And how exactly are we to do that?"

"Are you still certified for the M850?"

She turned her head slightly to face him, then looked back at the doors in front of her "Yep, definitely insane, 100%"

 **CPO Jacob-209, 1 hour later**

"She's a hefty beast isn't she?" He remarked, taking a step back to admire the twin-barelled M850 Grizzly MBT. The tank was effectively an up-armoured and up-armed variant of the traditional M808 Scorpion, and were legendary for taking extraordinary amounts of damage before needing repairs, so much so that some covenant strike forces avoided tackling the massive vehicles and opted to call in orbital bombardment in order to deal with them.

"The 178th armoured division deployed a handful to the city. According to the data logs, this one had its crew removed by some rather unhappy Elites, but is otherwise undamaged." He continued, jumping up onto the crew hatch and syncing with the tank's systems. "Everything checks out, lets get this thing moving."

He hopped down off of the matte-grey armour plating of one of the four tread bogeys, watching as Sara stowed her sniper rifle within the cramped driving compartment and slid herself expertly into the seat so that only the top of her helmet was visible as the armoured crew hatch slid over her, sealing her in.

He took another step back as the Grizzly's enormous engine roared into life. A layer of dust vibrated itself loose from the surfaces of the vehicle and the menacing shape of the twin 120mm canons swivelled around on their massive turret to face him.

"Don't go getting any ideas, everything feel good?" He said, searching the destroyed UNSC checkpoint for any remaining heavy weaponry. He found a dented M41 SPNKr Rocket Launcher and a couple of spare tubes amidst the bodies and melted vehicles.

"All systems online, let's go make some noise." Sara said over comms, swinging the turret forward and gently accelerating the 70-ton goliath toward the city centre. He mounted a Warthog they'd found a few blocks previously and followed the wide assault vehicle, keeping a close eye on the shy for incoming banshees. They were well outside the protective range of the Nakatomi missile battery, so if any fliers noticed their night-time rampage before it had begun, the Warthog's chain gun along with a handful of SPNKr rockets were their only defence.

"Spartan 209, this is Nakatomi Actual, Oliphants are beginning to roll in, you may begin your diversionary assault. Good hunting, over." A voice crackled through his helmet.

"Copy that, Nakatomi Actual, good luck, over." He broadcast, hoping that the lax radio protocols would pique the covenant's attention. "Next right Petty Officer, straight to Municipal Park."

Quiet fell upon the two-vehicle convoy, apart from the low throaty whine of the Warthog's engine and the surprisingly silent drone of the Grizzly's power plant, coupled with the counterintuitively delicate plinking of the tank's treads on the road's surface.

"Jake. Reach is falling." Sara's voice came through quiet and calm.

"I know." He paused, unable to articulate his thoughts, before deciding to remain silent.

"Enemy position sighted, 12 o'clock, 800 metres." The tank ground to a halt, and he pulled the Warthog over to the side of the street to get a better view; dead ahead, across the river, was the pre-fabricated enemy command post, a collection of domed structures arranged in rows in the centre of the city's municipal park. He could just about see the rows and rows of enemy armoured vehicles; wraiths, ghosts, spectres, any and all variants of covenant armour, along with a squadron of Banshee fliers laid out like dominoes.

"You may fire when ready" He breathed into his mic, using his helmet's optics to zoom in on the scene. He didn't want to miss this.

The still air of the city centre was shattered by twin roars as the Grizzly opened fire on the buildings with High Explosive rounds, sending jets of purple and blue tinged flame soaring into the sky, illuminating the treeline and buildings, throwing angry shadows across the ground. He watched in awe as the war machine spewed a barrage of 120mm shells into the heart of the covenant occupation in Manassas, alternately switching between HE and Canister rounds, devastating the structures and setting an entire row of enemy wraiths ablaze.

"Pull back, we've got their attention" He ordered, swinging the Hog around and charging back down the street to a parking lot about a kilometre away, leaving the LRV on the ground floor and then jumping out with the recovered Rocket Launcher.

"Copy, pulling back to position two" Sara confirmed, throwing the tank into reverse and backing up to a choke point a few blocks away from the first firing position. It was there that he joined her, SPNKr on his shoulder, facing down one of the three streets that the enemy counterattack would likely come, with the Grizzly sitting squarely in the middle of the crossroads.

They didn't have to wait long. Within a minute a pair of Ghosts sped into view on the right hand side, firing blue plasma bolts at the imposing hull of the Grizzly. They were quickly obliterated by the tank's main guns, only to be followed by a whole squad of infantry, darting from cover to cover, occasionally loosing a plasma bolt of needle round at their position.

"Left side, left side, I got a Pair of Hunters hiding behind the bank." Sara informed him "No clear shot"

"Take the building down, I'll focus on the infantry at our 3." He charged over to an abandoned car, resting his launcher against its wheel arch and engaging the crowd of grunts and jackals that he could see through his night vision filters, peppering them with armour-piercing rounds. The ground shook as the Grizzly bellowed out more rounds at the Hunters. He didn't look around, but he heard and felt the thunderous crashing as the building collapsed on the two Hunter warriors.

"Wraiths at our 12, engaging."

"Copy, banshees, fast and low" he responded, tossing a fragmentation grenade at the remaining infantry and rushing to grab the SPNKr and find a good firing position, unobstructed by buildings.

No sooner had he taken a position than the single Banshee flier swooped past, barely visible in the blackness, only visible thanks due to reflections from its bodywork from the fires at the covenant camp and his thermal filters. He struggled to track the aircraft as it darted through the sky, sticking below the silhouettes of the buildings all around him.

A wraith in the distance exploded, burning with a raging, pure white flame while another slung a bright blue plasma mortar round into the sky, which arced over them and collided with a bus 30 metres behind them, instantly reducing the front half to a melted puddle. He heaved the Rocket Launcher onto his shoulder and tracked the elusive Banshee, waiting for the thermal lock-on to engage. The fighter ducked below out of view and then back into view, approaching them rapidly from behind the tank, under the skyline. He pulled the trigger, and two rockets soared away from them, snaking up through the air to impact against the hull, destroying the enemy instantly in a ball of flame, the wreckage listing to one side, colliding with a storefront and detonating, throwing debris and shrapnel across the street.

"Banshee down, how're those wraiths looking?" He asked, discarding the spent tubes of the SPNKr and loading a fresh set, the tubes rotating smoothly into the 'fire' position.

"Got no shot on the last one, and he's getting more accurate with the mortar." Sara replied through gritted teeth. He looked back towards the tank just in time to see a blazing ball of death fall onto the front right tread of the tank, warping the armour plating and tearing portions of it off.

"Focus on the Spectres on the left, I'll go after the Wraith" He ordered, sprinting past the damaged Grizzly and down the street, keeping to the shadows. His heart pounded in his ears almost louder than his rapid breathing. Behind him he heard the tank's coaxially mounted LMG open up on what he assumed would be some very unfortunate infantry. Skidding to halt at a street corner before rounding it and firing another pair of rockets at the hard-to-miss form of the Wraith. The gunner on the pintle-mounted plasma canon had barely enough time to fire a few bolts of bright blue plasma at the retreating Spartan before the 40mm rockets slammed into the front of the cabin one after another, crumpling it like paper, knocking the vehicle out.

Satisfied that the wraith was down, he sprinted back towards Sara, dumping the spent rocket tubes on the ground as he went, stowing the empty launcher on his back and shouldering his rifle. He slid back into position behind a at this point half melted car and opening fire on the growing crowd of infantry advancing on their position.

"Infantry on my side" He called out, throwing his last grenade over his cover into a building in which a squad of enemy had gathered, preparing to storm their position.

"Fantastic" Sara said, voice dripping with sarcasm as the bulky turret swivelled around and started shooting, blowing away cover and filling the space with lead.

A voice cut on the radio cut through the chaos "Nakatomi Actual to Spartan 209, wounded are on board, we're shutting down the ops centre and pulling out now, over."

"Copy Nakatomi Actual, we'll finish up here and fall back, over and out." He replied, slapping a fresh magazine into his rifle. "Sab, you hold down the fort until we get there, keep the AA battery up and running to give the Oliphants cover."

The other Spartan responded quickly "Affirmative, Doc's keeping the turrets loaded and primed, I'm on babysitting duty."

"Keep me posted" He cut off their comm line as he finished squeezing off bursts into a grunt squad. He looked up into the sky and smiled with satisfaction; the corvette was moving into position to fire on them directly. The flickering flames from the destroyed command post danced off of the smooth curving hull of the warship, making it seem like a ghostly spectre descending on them, cloaked in shadow and draped in light. Right on cue.

"Sara, next stage." He barked, ducking behind his cover and cueing up SATCOM on his HUD. As the satellites synchronised with his suit's systems, the Grizzly belched its final shots, firing canister shell rounds into the streets which exploded into shrapnel and shredded what little infantry remained.

"ODP _Esposz,_ this is Sierra-209 requesting orbital MAC strike on my position, authorisation code Victor-Sierra-9-3-Delta, over." His voice appeared as a waveform on his screen as he waited for the response.

"Sierra-209, this is ODP _New Alexandria_ Fire Control, afraid the _Esposz_ is a melted pool of slag, we'll have to do. Atmospheric MAC strike on SDV-class Corvette inbound in 60 seconds, advise you leave the area and withdraw to a minimum safe distance of 2 kilometres, over." The calm female voice came back, and confirmation orders were displayed on his HUD as the massive Orbital Defence Platform slowly turned around to point its massive 'Super' MAC canon downwards. The Corvette wouldn't even know what hit it.

"Ready." Sara said, having already clambered out of the tank with her sniper rifle in hand. They set off together back down the road towards the Warthog, sprinting as fast as they could. Sara threw her rifle into the passenger foot well and jumped into the driver's seat as he hauled himself onto the turret position and thumbed the priming trigger to test that the gun worked.

He'd barely settled behind the gun when Sara gunned it out of the parking lot and out onto the street. He held on for dear life as she turned to race away from the pursuing Corvette. He swung the gun around to face the pursuer and spotted a pair of banshees bearing down on them. He thumbed the trigger and opened fire, sending a hail of lead towards them, the spent casings bouncing off of the open back of the Hog and tumbling out into the street. At this range he couldn't tell if his fire was having any effect, but the two fliers peeled off and arced away, so he guessed that they'd been called off by the Corvette.

"Brace yourself!" He yelled as the countdown timer on his HUD reached zero. Thunder roared, his helmet's filters maxed out and shut out all outside noise to stop him from going deaf. Every glass window in the entire inner city shattered explosively. The shockwave was enough to bump their Hog violently, which sent him tumbling out of the gunner position almost out of the vehicle. Thankfully he reached out at the last second and grabbed a handrail, pulling himself inside the passenger seat as Sara struggled to control the LRV. He craned his neck around to see that the corvette had been shattered by the force in the 300 ton MAC round. No piece bigger than a bus was intact, all of it tumbling towards the ground, crashing into the sides of buildings. The MAC round itself had shot clean through the ship and impacted on the ground in the municipal park, and judging from the sheer size of the dust cloud thrown up (which shone and glittered due to the pulverised glass), an enormous crater had probably been left in that area.

"Bugger me" He gasped, settling back into the seat, releasing one of the handholds and noticing that he'd been gripping it so hard that it had bent.

"That was the definition of overkill right there." Sara agreed, still focussed on the road ahead as they sped away from the blast site. "I think getting out of the city just got a whole lot easier"

 **Doctor Salvia Martinez, 10 minutes earlier**

 _Whoever designed this BALLISTA Anti-Air Missile Defence System needs a good slap._ She thought to herself, elbows deep in wiring and hydraulics. The damn thing's autoloader was about as useful as a chocolate fireman. It had broken about 30 minutes before they had arrived at Nakatomi according to the Marines, and it just did not want to play nicely, so for now they, meaning her and the Spartan Sabina-211, were stuck with manually loading each 20kg missile. The Spartan handled the HE warheads as she would a pencil, another testimonial to the unique power of those suits they wore. She would have to look into these armour systems when she got back to the _Hephaestus_.

She shook her head in frustration and spat out the flashlight that she'd been clutching between her teeth in order to see into the depths of the loader. "This thing is toast."

"Shame." The Spartan said emotionlessly, then tilting her head to the side slightly, which was as far as Salvia could tell the only indication that they were talking to each other. "Time to go inside Doc, things are going to get a bit noisier out here in a minute."

"So why couldn't you have taken out the ship sooner?" She asked as she was led back into the building, down the stairwell and into a lavishly furnished apartment. "Would've made my journey so far a little easier."

The Spartan shook her head "Not that easy. As soon as we divert firepower like an ODP MAC round to ground targets, Covenant Command will know that something worth protecting is down here, likely divert something much bigger to find out what." They entered the apartments bathroom, and Sabina pointed to the power shower in the corner "Get in there, don't want something coming loose from the ceiling and killing you."

She raised an eyebrow and stood inside the shower, sliding the reinforced glass door shut "Just how powerful is this MAC round then? We only worked with the Mark 8s with Infinity."

"50 times the mass, thousand times the velocity." The Spartan recalled. "Brace yourself" She said, crouching down and leaning against the wall, and she did the same.

She felt the shockwave ripple through the building, the structure groaned and creaked, and she heard a terrible crashing noise from the other room. She was pushed forcibly off of her crouched feet and into the wall, bruising her cheek and sending her glasses clattering into the other corner of the cubicle. The Spartan didn't so much as sway as a glass on the sink shelf tumbled from its perch and shattered on the tiled floor. A mighty roar filled her ears, oddly muffled inside the enclosed box of the shower.

When her ears stopped ringing she exited the shower and heard a new sound that had not been present before, whistling and moaning of the wind from somewhere.

"Let's go and admire the view Doc." The Spartan said "The others should be back soon."

Less than five minutes later, having admired the view through the now shattered windows of the penthouse apartment, they were back on the roof again, finalising the preparation of the BALLISTA. The missile system had 20 missiles loaded and ready to fire, after that it would need to be manually reloaded again. That gave their little group 20 rockets to cover any significant air threats. When the turret ran out, they would have only small arms to defend themselves against air attack. Hopefully by then the three Spartans and her would have caught up with the convoy of 5 Oliphant garbage trucks that the UNSC forces had loaded into.

"So how long have you three worked together?" She asked the Spartan, not really expecting an answer. If all went to plan, she wouldn't have another opportunity to grill a Spartan alone again, and she had so many questions about the programme, the training, the suits themselves were another level of intrigue.

The Spartan stared at her unmoving. "Classified"

"Of course. I was just thinking about your armour. It looks remarkably compact for something able to generate an energy shield. How did they manage to miniaturise a fusion cell powerful enough to keep that kind of energy flowing? And the punishment those things can take even without shielding. Remarkable." She was babbling and she knew it. She'd hoped that her seemingly inane conversation would spark the soldier to let slip some meaningless detail about the suits. However, these Spartans were as secretive as they were formidable, so she hadn't really expected her ploy to work. She was not disappointed.

"That's classified as well. But you should know that it is not the suit that makes a Spartan."

"Then what does?" She fired back, sensing a way in to a line of questioning.

The Spartan became silent.

"I only ask about the suits because Jacob seemed to have taken a lot of plasma damage to his right thigh, I was wondering if I could help in some way." This was a partial truth, but she wanted any nugget of information.

"Do not worry about Jacob." She said, and Salvia thought she could detect a glint of annoyance in her Slavic tone. "He's fine."

"As you wish" She relented, slumping back up against an AC unit and fiddling with her M6 pistol. The sidearm had already saved her life once, and she wanted to make sure she kept it safe. An odd sense of guilt compelled her to do so, for if the previous owner had not acted as she had, Salvia would likely be a corpse in a burnt Pelican right now. She owed it to Bird to carry it out of here.

"Downtimes over Doc, perimeter tripwire's been tripped." The Spartan said, standing up and moving quickly towards the stairwell.

She followed her, winding down the endless stairs until they emerged into the lobby. The perimeter tripwires were spread around the streets surrounding the tower, and their activation could only mean that covenant ground forces had surrounded the plaza.

"Get in the stairwell, under the stairs, stay there until I tell you, keep your head down, and don't let them take you alive." The Spartan barked as she took up a firing position behind an overturned vending machine.

"Okay" She said, stomach twisted in fear as she huddled behind the concrete stairs and unholstered her pistol.

The gunfire started not long after. The rapport of the Spartan's assault rifle blended with the high pitched whining of plasma weapons discharging, interspersed with the loud booms of what she assumed must be fragmentation grenades. The smell of cordite and ionised air wafted into the stairwell, combining with the smell of her own sweaty clothes. As the skirmish intensified, she heard less and less of the familiar rifle fire and more of the menacing chorus of alien weaponry and the harsh grating orders barked by the enemy combatants.

She cocked her pistol and prepared to fight for her life when a cacophony of noise blared from outside. The roaring of an engine mixed with the deafening ripping of a minigun drowned out all other sound as her reactive ear plugs yet again saved her hearing from permanent damage by expanding in her ear canal and blocking out the orchestra of mayhem. The noise continued for a good three minutes, punctuated by screams and cries as the alien aggressors were cut down. The dust smoke from the skirmish drifted into the stairwell, and she coughed and spluttered as her eyes watered.

Bright cones of light cut through the haze. "Doctor, are you alright?"

She nodded her head and got to her feet, following Sabina out into the lobby, taking note of the fresh collection of scorch marks along every wall. There was a concentration of the marks around where the Spartan had sheltered, behind the main desk, and the structure had started to melt under the punishment. She almost tripped over a dead Grunt on the way out, and saw the remnants of an entire Covenant File scattered around the square, Elites draped over concrete bollards, their heads missing, a pair of Grunts looked like popped tomatoes, and she conceived that they had probably been run down by the Warthog to which she was being led.

"Sab, take the wheel, Doc get in the middle, Sara'll box you in once she's back." Jake said, standing to the rear of the vehicle clearing brass shell casings from the rear bed of the truck.

She hauled her way up into the Warthog's passenger bay and settled in the middle seat, tuning the radio to the UNSC Emergency Broadcast System. The bulletins coming through confirmed the worst; another Fleet had appeared in orbit above reach, many times the size of the raiding party already present on the planet. The Defense Fleet was engaging and taking heavy losses. Mass civilian and military evacuations were taking place across all continents.

Her somber listening was interrupted by the harsh clanging of Sara dumping a series of belts of large calibre ammunition onto the truck bed behind her. "2000 rounds HEDP, courtesy of the 15th Infantry."

"Outstanding" Jake approved, and begin the process of loading the tri-barrelled M41 Vulcan LAAG with the ammunition. She switched the radio off and turned to face the CPO.

"So what's the plan now?" She asked as she felt the vehicle's suspension rock and settle as the other Spartan clambered into the passenger seat of the LRV.

"We catch up with the others and provide covering fire until they reach our lines on the city limits. Then we move on to our extraction point." He said calmly, racking the charging handle on the LAAG and pivoting around, checking his range of motion. "Or should they come under indefensible fire, we bolt for the evac alone."

"We leave them to die?" She asked, horrified.

"Yes, we leave them to fend for themselves. It's the best way to ensure your safety." He stated matter-of-factly. "Sab, punch it, I have a feeling that the Oliphants are going to attract attention."

 **Corporal Adam Kovic, 405** **th** **ODST, Manassass Waste Management Oliphant No.34, 5 kilometres North of Manassass**

"This place smells like shit" He shouted over at Haverson over the noise of the engine. They, along with a dozen other Marines, soldiers and Medics, were packed into the back of an Oliphant along with a single Sterile Field Generator, which hummed and glowed green in the centre of the room. The device killed any micro-organisms in the environment, but did little to stop the foul stench typical to garbage trucks.

The ONI agent nodded, wrinkling his nose. "Beats trying to get out on foot."

Their vehicle had volunteered to be the one heading up the rear of the convoy, ahead of them, 4 other massive tracked vehicle soldiered on out of the city, towards the UNSC's lines another 10 kilometres away. Each Oliphant had 5 men able to fight, a couple of rockets for a SPNKr and whatever small arms ammunition they had been able to carry with them to defend themselves. But so far they had remained inside the vehicles, closed in with the stench.

"Resistance 1, this is Sierra-209, we're on our way to you now, be warned, we see a significant number of enemy aircraft inbound to your position, over." The Spartans voice came over the comms, crackly and distant. The damn bodywork of the Oliphants played hell with their radios.

"Copy that Sierra-209. Alright everybody, canvas up, I want everybody ready to fight ASAP, looks like the Covvies didn't buy the robotic truck thing." He said, cracking open the maintenance hatch in the ceiling and breathing a sigh of relief at fresh air. He settled above the cab of the vehicle with a SPNKr in his hands, looking around to see others from the convoy doing the same. The other able soldiers, including Haverson, clambered out after him, dragging crates of ammo behind them. He adjusted position so that he had some cover from air attack.

"Resistance 1 to any UNSC forces, we are approaching friendly lines and need immediate CAS, over." He broadcast, loading the rocket tubes into the launcher and shouldering it, scanning the skies either side of the road for enemies. Far behind them, the tall towers of Manassass flittered and shone in the moonlight, to their right a range of impossibly high mountains rose from the ground and arced away to the south, their peaks capped in snow. To their left, the Manassass valley stretched away, rolling fields and hills. Under other circumstances he might've taken a picture.

"Copy Resistance 1, two Wombats are on station, ready to provide CAS as needed, out." Came the response from the command centre at Fort Witherson.

"Solid Copy, much obliged Witherson, Resistance out." He grinned. The Wombat was a UAV with enough firepower to level a city block. He was looking forward to seeing the supersonic fighters in action.

"Banshees, fast and low, 4 o'clock!" He heard someone in the front vehicle shout, and as they passed by a fuel station he saw them; the horizon was almost black with the silhouettes of aircraft, easily a dozen of them screaming towards them.

"Mark your targets and communicate!" He shouted, aiming at the far right flier with the targeting scope, waiting for the lock-on noise. He heard a noise, but it wasn't the faint chirping of the weapon, it was a colossal bang from behind him, he spun around to see two impossibly small specs in the sky trailing smoke and lighting up. Jets of propellant spurted from the specs, and raced towards the banshees over their heads. He returned his attention to the rocket launcher.

"Backblast clear!" he shouted before pulling the trigger, launching a rocket into the sky along with the others from the Oliphants. Combined with the missiles fired from the two drones, the banshees didn't really stand a chance. Some of them tried to swerve out of the way, ducking and weaving as the missiles tracked them. Some vapourised in the explosions, others were ripped apart and fell heavily into the surrounding fields.

"That was too easy" He mumbled, his sixth sense screaming at him.

The first indication that anything was wrong was the almost silent scream of a Marine being puled off of the Oliphant in front of him. He heard it though, and jerked his head around to see a group of elites scaling the side of the vehicle. They must've used the Banshees as a distraction. Clever bastards.

"Contact left!" He screamed, throwing the still-loaded rocket launcher at an Elite who had climbed up the side of his Oliphant right next to him. The launcher was heavy enough to knock the alien off balance, and he used it to his advantage, kicking it square in the chest and sending it tumbling off of the side of the truck. He raised his rifle at the next combatant and opened fire, ducking under a clumsy energy sword swing and pressing the muzzle of his gun into the attacker's stomach, disembowelling him with lead. Similar sounds could be heard all along the line, small arms fire combined with the screaming of men and alien alike.

Another Elite came at him, and he raised his hand to stop the downward strike of its energy sword, grabbing at the alien's arm and locking his elbow. He strained to halt the motion, but the elite was stronger and they both knew it. Slowly but surely, the energy sword came closer and closer to his chest.

And then, it was gone. The smoking hole in the elites chest cavity, along with the spray of blue blood all over his helmet were completely silent until a moment later when the sharp rapport of the rifle came from behind the Oliphant. The Elite groaned and slumped backwards, and he turned his head to see the familiar shape of a Warthog racing towards them, the sniper rifle wielded by the passenger still smoking form the life-saving shot.

The Spartans' hog opened up, spraying high-explosive rounds into the Oliphants' attackers. The Hog itself wheeled around to the left hand side of the convoy to better defend them from the infantry attack.

"Armoured column behind us!" He heard one of the female Spartans shout over the radio

"We're on it" The Wombats peeled away from them and circled around, presumably to decimate whatever armour the covenant had left.

"Dead ahead!" The lead vehicle declared, and he saw the Warthog race off ahead of them. He didn't exactly see what happened up there, but by the time his Oliphant rolled through the enemy lines, there were destroyed Wraith tanks and scores of covenant bodies strewn all across the highway and surrounding grassland. He took the time to shoot a couple of hangers-on, amazed by the destruction.

"We're through the enemy lines now" Haverson noted.

"That's it?" He mouthed, looking around suspiciously.

"That's it, now we just-"

The ONI agent was cut off by a thunderous boom echoing through the valley. Kovic immediately reached for his rifle, but there was no imminent threat. So where had the noise come from? He scanned the horizon for a good 20 seconds before a Marine on the next Oliphant exclaimed and pointed.

A gargantuan fireball descended from the sky about 10 kilometres away, the silhouette of a UNSC frigate barely discernible through the lapping flames as it screeched and tumbled, followed by a hail of flaming debris as it burned up in the atmosphere. The ball of fire touched down and exploded, sending a visible shockwave through the earth, followed by an enormous mushroom cloud rising slowly from the crash site. It was a horrific site. And yet he couldn't look away.

They travelled the rest of the journey in silence, all of them sombrely pondering the gravity of the situation a little more pessimistically. It was only when the ODST was loaded up in the back of a Pelican that he spoke, to give his name, rank and serial number to an ONI officer for debriefing. He was to be fast-tracked straight back to Sydney. Part of him wanted to argue, to stay and defend his home. But he was so tired. His entire squad had already paid the price, and he was just relieved to not be sent back to the front for once. He would never admit this out loud, helljumpers had a reputation to maintain. He rested his head back onto the pads of the pelican's seats and slept.

 **Dr Salvia Martinez, Reach**

"We're leaving" Haverson said, stepping up onto the tailgate of a Pelican dropship "We're heading to the only ship still left planetside, the _Pillar of Autumn_ , she's still docked in Esposz." He turned and looked at her, smiling slightly "Good luck Doctor, you won't need it with those Spartans looking out for you."

She smiled back, offering her hand to shake, and he took it. "You take care Lieutenant, I want to see you in the Officer's club in Bravo-6 before year's end." She smiled sadly, well aware of the unlikeliness of her wish.

He nodded, then turned further into the dropship as the door closed and the engines picked up, whipping dust into her face as she backed away into one of the Spartans.

"Ma'am, time to go." Sabina said, gesturing back towards their Warthog. The five abandoned Oliphants lay empty behind it, every wounded soldier had been loaded up and evacuated 5 minutes ago. The rest of the area was also similarly abandoned, despite it being a hub of activity a short while ago. The Army had begun its planet-wide evacuations. All were fleeing, some to Earth, some to other colonies. Reach was lost.

"Okay, let's get off this rock" She agreed, quickly settling in between the two Spartans again. "I never liked it here anyway."

 **Chief Petty Officer Jacob-209, Reach, 20 minutes later**

"How far out are we?" Jacob yelled as he thumbed the spade triggers yet again on the M41 LAAG mounted to the back of their Warthog, unleashing a hail of High Explosive Dual Purpose rounds into the pair of Ghosts trailing them. The light reconnaissance vehicles quickly fell behind, shuddering and exploding under the onslaught. The Warthog went over a bump in the gravel road and he was almost thrown off of his position, and as he struggled to keep hold of the turret, he saw a pair of Phantom dropships swoop over the distant hillsides and join the chase.

He cursed himself, they had spent too long at the Marine Evac point, ensuring the successful evacuation of every wounded man, along with Haverson and Kovic. Had they left a few minutes earlier, they could be off planet by now. The covenant was closing in. They had caught up with them just as the last transport was away, recovering remarkably quickly from the destruction of their HQ in Manassass' Municipal Park. They had decimated the first wave of attack and then fled in their one vehicle, which was only ever designed to carry three. The three Spartans plus the DOC were spilling out of the vehicle, and Sara was hanging out of the side seat, holding her sniper rifle up to her shoulder, keeping an eye out ahead. The poor Doc was sandwiched between two half-ton Spartans, looking comically small between them.

"We're 3 klicks out!" Sabina shouted from the driver's seat, wrenching the wheel around to drag the Hog's legendarily fish-tail happy back end back onto the road.

"I see two Phantoms, fast and low, can we vector for CAS?" He shouted back, keeping the chaingun spooled up and ready to fire as soon as the dropships came into range.

"Negative, the only Air Force base on this continent not currently a smoking pile of ash is McFarral, and they're under heavy bombardment. Navy birds are all tied up doing evac." She swore and jerked the Warthog to the side, narrowly avoiding the strafing plasma fire of a Banshee diving on them.

He spun the turret around and opened fire on them, crouching in his position to point the ends of the tri-barrelled gun at the lone flier, getting a few hits in before the aircraft ducked below the low hills and ridges that ran alongside the valley.

"As soon as we get there Doc, you run for the dropship, you get on board as quickly as you can." Sara said, firing her sniper rifle at the banshee as it poked above the treeline alongside them.

"O-okay" She yelled back, readying her sidearm.

The banshee broke from the cover of the foliage and soared up over them, and he winced in pain as he crouched down on the turret to bring the gun up to fire, his wounded leg protesting sharply. He span around to follow the flier, tracer rounds ripping the vehicle apart as it tumbled from the sky and detonated in a blue fireball.

"Good shooting Jay!" Sabina approved and they began to climb the steep road draped on the side of the hill. At the top, an ONI Owl stealth dropship, essentially a smaller version of the Pelican, was waiting to break atmosphere and get the Doc off planet, hopefully to the ONI sloop docked at Station Gamma, the _Circumference_.

The moment of elation as the banshee burned was quickly overcast by the appearance of a column of Wraiths on the horizon, speeding towards them. He even spotted a specialist Anti-Air model, bristling with Fuel-Rod weaponry. The Covenant were really throwing everything they had at them.

"Enemy Anti-Air, 6 o'clock!" He called out.

"Enemy Dropships high 11!" Sara shouted simultaneously, and he wheeled around to see a dozen or more Phantoms and Spirits in the distance. They were vastly outnumbered.

Sabina spat some Russian curses as they fishtailed around to follow the gravel path upwards to the extraction point.

"Spooky 2-8, this is Siera-209, we are one klick out and expecting company, how copy?" He broadcast as the net of covenant drew around them.

"Sierra-209, this is Spooky 2-8, we copy loud and clear, engine's warm and ready for a hot exfil. Skies aren't looking too clear, but we're ready." The Pilot's voice seemed calm enough, but Jake knew that this exfiltration was going to be a tough one, even for him.

"Roger that." He confirmed, opening fire at a ghost that had caught up with them, wincing as a bolt of plasma washed over his shields, draining them. Another bolt clipped the Hog's bodywork, melting though armour leaving a glowing red mark.

The whine of impulse drives drew louder as they ascended, and a whole flight of banshees crested the horizon to the south, bearing down on them.

"Holy shit" Sara whispered softly, real fear creeping into her voice. He spun his head around to face the threat; he couldn't quite make out what it was at first, but years of training and experience helped him fill in the blanks about the enormous storm to the east. It wasn't a storm. It was a 6 kilometre long Assault Carrier, descending through the cloud layer, its curved silhouette dragging wispy vapour with it like a shroud of invisibility.

"Step on it Sab" He warned as they crested the hill and began the last mad dash along a narrow hilltop towards the meadow in which he could see the matte-grey Owl, engines running, causing ripples in the long grass due to the downdraught.

In no time they were there, Sabina and the Doctor already sprinting towards the open bay of the Owl as he and Sara jumped down from the Hog and ran towards it. His heart pounded and his breath was ragged in his ears. Doc and Sab were already inside. They were almost there. Then it all went wrong.

"Banshee!" The pilot screamed, and he whipped his head around to see the green glow of a banshee round speeding towards them. The Owl's engine screeched as the craft evaded the round, tumbling off of the cliff in front of it in its efforts. Suddenly he and Sara were alone in the open with no dropship, no cover in sight. Easy targets. Another banshee came in for an attack run.

She didn't say anything. He had no warning. One instant he was staring down a Banshee, firing into its centre mass with his rifle, watching as the fighter let loose a glowing green fuel rod round at him. No escape. The next he was on his side on the ground, his weapon tumbling over the cliff edge as he skidded precariously close to the precipice. He didn't even have time to gather his senses before the green missile impacted where he had just been, sending him tumbling further away.

His blood ran cold. She had pushed him out of the way. Sara. No. He scrambled to his feet, spinning in the dust cloud, trying to find her. He couldn't see a thing, the explosion had thrown so much dust up into the air, that he couldn't even see his hands before him. His helmet bleeped at him, showing catastrophic damage to the shield generator and motion sensor modules. He shut them off.

"SARA!" He bellowed, a raw animal cry of pain. He stumbled around, trying to find her. His ribs ached, his leg was on fire, but that didn't matter.

His foot hit something hard as he walked. It was her. He fell to his knees and tried to clear some of the soil off of her. She was limp and lifeless, her armour battered. The shield generator must've been broken, because no shimmering layer of energy stopped him from lightly touching her mangled leg. The armour had been completely melted away, exposing charred flesh and bone, held on by only sinew.

Dread tied knots in his guts. He couldn't breathe. The war stopped. The chaos and destruction all around him stopped for a brief moment. Everything else fell away into the background.

She looked almost peaceful. He numbly checked her vital signs, noting that she still had a pulse. There was little emotion to his actions, he was just following his training. Almost as if he had taken a back seat and let the Spartan in him take over. Not quite in control, but still looking through his eyes.

The dust and smoke was whipped away as the Owl wobbled back over the cliff and spun around, and he picked her up in his arms, letting her eviscerated limb fall back to the ground as he walked briskly over to the back door of the dropship and laid her down. The rear doors slid shut and he felt the g-forces tug at him as the pilot shot away from the covenant fighters. He took a more thorough look at her.

She looked like a broken doll, a child's plaything discarded to the side of the road. Her leg was missing entirely, and most of the arm on the same side of the body was a blackened twisted mess. He knelt down beside her and slowly removed her helmet, staring down into her brown eyes as they stared back, wide and scared.

He vaguely became aware that Sab was doing something on Sara's other side, but he didn't really care. She was shouting something in his ear, her movements sluggish. But all he really saw was Sara. She was mouthing something slowly but he couldn't understand, part of her mouth was burned, blackened as much as her helmet.

He took off his helmet and dropped it weakly at his side, steadying himself against the strong evasive manoeuvres the dropship was performing. He felt none of them.

"What is it?" He asked her, leaning down to better hear her.

Her voice was hoarse and weak. He could hear her skin crackling as she moved her lips to from the words. The pain must've been unendurable.

"I'm. S-sorry" She croaked, her breaths wheezing, her face contorted in pain.

Sab worked on her furiously, grabbing her good hand and clenching it. "No need Sara, just hang in there, just stay with us."

Sara snorted, punctuated by fresh wheezes of agony. She looked into his eyes, jerking her head slightly to signal him to come closer. He lowered his ear to her mouth, still in a trance.

"You have to go on. She won't make it without you." She gasped, coughing and choking in between words. He knew that her lungs were filling up with blood. "I've always loved her."

He turned to look into her eyes again, and all traces of pain were gone from them. Just calm acceptance. "It's been an honour" He croaked.

She nodded, and started to speak, urging him to re-lower his head to hear her. "Don't ever tell her."

He nodded. Sab would never be able to forget the information. It would weigh down on her. So he had to bear the weight. And he would until the day he died.

She shuddered, breathing slow and shallow now, eyes defocussed. "Thank you." She whispered one last time before her mouth fell slack and her hand slipped out of Sabina's grasp. Her head rolled to one side, dripping blood from her lips.

Sabina worked on her all the way through the 3 minute remainder of the flight, pumping fluids and aspirating her airway. He followed the protocol too, but he wasn't really there. He barely noticed when they docked with an ONI Corvette and she was hastily wheeled away by a team of medical personnel. He just sat there in the Owl's crew bay inside the corvette's docking bay as the ship started the escape from Reach, jumping into Slip-Space as the planet fell. The floor of the bay was stained a dark red.

"I'm sorry Spartan." Suddenly Martinez was sitting right next to him. He hadn't detected her come in. "They called it 4 minutes ago."

He looked around at her. "How long have we been on board?"

"Four hours. Are you okay?" She asked, looking worried.

"I'm fine." He lied "And you don't need to be sorry Doc. It should have been me."

She cleared her throat and stared at the opposite wall. "There's an old 20th Century poem that I like to think of in times like these. Really helped me when my Dad died. Would you like to hear it?"

He said nothing, so she proceeded:

"The Art of Losing isn't hard to master,

So many things seem filled with the intent to be lost,

That their loss is no disaster."

He smiled weakly, recognising the familiar prose. "One Art. Elizabeth Bishop, 1975. I know it."

She raised an eyebrow "A Spartan who knows ancient poetry. Now I've seen everything."

"It was my mother's favourite" He whispered, latching on to the only memory he had of his parent. He looked around wearily, clearing his throat "Where's my helmet, I need to do something."

She leaned down under the seats and picked it up, handing it to him. He slipped it around his ears and silenced the alarms and klaxons that had activated as soon as she had flat lined. He opened up the mission roster and moved Sara-171 from "Active" to "Missing In Action."

"Thank you Doctor, if you'll excuse me." He said, standing up and saluting the ONI attaché.

"Of course. She's in the infirmary. I need to report to the bridge anyway, Admiral Walker is expecting me." She walked past him, pausing to give him a squeeze of the arm as she went.

He marched through the corridors of the corvette to the infirmary and found the room completely empty apart from Sabina, who was slumped down in a seat at the far end of the room, helmet off and hair let down from its bun. He guessed that she'd been there for some time, because the motion-activated lights flickered back on as he walked up to her and joined her in staring out of the window and the eerie blackness of slip-space.

It was 10 minutes before he broke the silence, taking off his helmet and sighing. "You know what Chief Mendez would say in this situation?"

She shook her head "Probably some ball-busting quip ending with a heartfelt sentiment."

He smiled sadly "You're probably right, but I'd bet on him using the whole "Spending lives versus wasting lives" spiel"

"This was a waste." She growled, standing up and pacing around the room. "We never should have been sent on this fucking mission. Where was out CAS or orbital support?"

"Sab, there was none left, we did what we co-"

"Don't you dare finish that fucking sentence." She shouted. He heard crashing behind him and swivelled to see Sab overturning the gurneys and punching bio-monitors, sending sparks flying and bits of circuit board everywhere.

"It's not fair." She spat as she kicked the remnants of the machine across the room, howling in anguish.

He stood up and grabbed her by the arm, and she rounded on him, raising her hand to strike him before freezing, her eyes filled with tears. He stood his ground, and she slowly lowered her fist, upon which she fell to her knees, openly sobbing. He fell with her, wrapping her in his arms, blinking tears out of his own eyes.

"Easy, easy, I'm here" He softly whispered as they sat there in the middle of the room. He'd never seen her like this. The loss of Sara was not enough for this. But he felt her pain. They were safe, travelling back to Earth faster than the speed of light, but Reach, their home, was gone. Who knows what happened to the other Spartans. He was filled with hopelessness and sorrow, an all-consuming wave of blackness creeping up from the depths of his soul.

"They wouldn't even let me see her body" She whispered once the tears had subsided. "Straight to cryo"

He just nodded "We'll deal with this. We have to. There's still a war to fight."

"I know." She sighed, closing her eyes.

He exhaled, realising how physically and mentally exhausted he was. 48 hours of active combat were wearing him down. He smiled sadly and mumbled the end lines of the Doctor's poem

"Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love0,

I shan't have lied,

It's evident that the art of losing's not too hard to master.

Even if it looks like (Write it.) Disaster."

He finished, yawning and tapped on Sabina's shoulder. "Come on, can't sleep here, let's go."

Tomorrow they would fight. They would fight on against the eternal enemy until their dying moments, and with Martinez' efforts, maybe they would be one step closer to winning. But today was not that day. They would rest, mourn, and prepare for the upcoming battle. After all, the art of losing's not too hard to master.


	5. Complete Omnibus

**Doctor Salvia Martinez, Chief ONI Engineering Officer attached to Project INFINITY, ONI Command Facility 'KNOX', Reach, Epsilon Eridani System, July 24** **th** **2552**

"The Art of losing isn't hard to master,

So many things seem filled,

With the intent to be lost,

That their loss is no disaster."

She spoke, painfully aware that one wrong word in this lion's den could very well be her last. Her senior advisors had practically ordered her to keep literary flourishes and extravagances to an absolute minimum when reporting to the Office of Naval Intelligence's High Council. The five senior officers in the darkened room were arguably the most powerful individuals in the UNSC, and she feared they might not appreciate 600-year-old poetry being spouted by some jumped-up civilian contractor in an important briefing.

"The Human race has had a steep learning curve in the last three decades. We've lost time and time again, countless colony worlds reduced to glass by the Covenant. You could say that the UNSC has almost forgotten how to win military engagements." She rattled on, hoping that her reveal would outweigh the overly dramatic build-up.

She shot a glance to Admiral Walker, who responded with an almost imperceptible wink, letting her know that he was there to support her. It was the part of ONI which Walker presided over, Section Three, which had approached her about this project 5 years ago. She'd been a senior Engineering Officer at the Reyes-McLees shipbuilding yards in orbit around Mars and had personally overseen the construction of four of the Navy's powerhouse Marathon-Class Heavy cruisers. The stress of the mammoth task had damn near killed her, and it was in the wake of the last hull, the UNSC _Timid_ , having been formally commissioned into service, that the black-uniformed ONI agent had approached her in a bar in New Austin.

At first, she had thought that the woman was flirting with her, talking about "going to the stars" and "fantastic opportunity". It was only when the operative had started bringing up her personnel files from Reyes-McLees Industries that she'd taken her seriously. The offer of a 4-figure upfront payment, 6-figure salary and the prospect of heading up the greatest engineering project of the 26th century sealed her fate, and the next day she was on an ONI prowler heading for the Oort cloud on the edges of the Solar system.

She'd spent the next five years living and working on the UNSC shipbuilding superstation _Hephaestus_ in the employ of ONI Section 3, reporting periodically to Admiral Walker as to the progress of Project Infinity. It'd been a struggle at times. She'd had to be referred to ONI psychiatrists to help her frequent insomnia. However, now she was about to reveal Infinity to the other Section heads, and she was close to passing out.

"However, now it is time to show what Humanity can do, to regain the offensive capability we so dearly lack, to take the fight to alien shores, and prevent our inevitable annihilation." She said. "Admirals, please feast your eyes on the first ship in the Infinity-class. The key to our salvation."

She unlocked the files on her datapad and sent them to the devices In front of the Officers. On the screens, a 3D model of a warship appeared, with a barrage of information displayed next to it, outlining capabilities, specifications, crew, everything the Admirals would want to know about the enormous vessel.

The table was silent for a good few minutes, with three out of five Officers deeply engrossed in the material, occasionally raising their eyebrows or coughing. Admiral Walker sat silently, looking more at his fellow Section heads than the data before him, and Admiral Parangosky simply stared at her, her face fixed in an expressionless slate. From what she'd heard, this not-display of emotion was the best she could hope for from the CINCONI.

It was the Section Zero chief, Admiral Korobi, who eventually broke the silence. "So this is where all of our budgets have been going. Is she ready to launch?" He looked up at her, his dark complexion almost invisible in the deliberately dark lighting of the room.

"Yes sir, in theory. The Shipbuilding AI Aine is a little apprehensive, but all her systems are ready to go. She just needs a crew." She responded, highlighting the relevant data on their screens.

Admiral Sera was next. She looked up from the pad, smiling wryly. "How the hell have you kept this a secret for so long Martin?"

Walker coughed "Total communications black out from within the Oort cloud system, all contractors locked down for 5 years, like the good Doctor here."

Admiral Parangosky raised her hand slightly, drawing instant silence. She spoke in a voice that simultaneously matched her frail appearance and betrayed her wicked intellect, cool and composed on the surface with sinister undercurrents. "I've kept the right people in Fleet informed. Infinity will be a game-changer, capable of decimating even the most powerful covenant ships. Doctor Martinez, you have done exceptional work, and I will personally assure that it is rewarded accordingly. However, your involvement with Project Infinity is not over."

Salvia frowned slightly, before composing herself and nodding.

" _Infinity_ is just the first of many. Your work on INF-101 is complete, she'll enter active service within three years, and make more difference to the war than you'll ever know. Now work starts on INF-102."

She fought for control over her emotions. One side of her wanted to run out of that room and never look back. Infinity would always be her greatest achievement, but it had taken so much of her, she wondered if she could take another one. The other side of her wanted to jump right back in. She knew that from the second-in-class ships and onwards, things became a lot easier. Maybe she could complete this new ship with her health intact. The overall feeling was one of excitement, raw passion and an almost arrogant desire for a challenge. It was her biggest downfall, her almost obsessive need to throw herself into her work. And what better work could she do?

After a few brief seconds, she nodded, breathing steadily. "Yes ma'am. When do I start?"

Parangosky's mouth twitched, the ghost of a smile. "You start in September. UNSC Engineering still has to clear up the shipyard from _Infinity_. Once they're done, work on INF-102 will commence. Admiral Walker will brief you tomorrow. If that's all, I think we're done here."

She cleared her throat. "There is one thing Admiral."

Walker shot her a ' _What the hell do you think you're doing?'_ look, but she continued, fully aware that if this went south she could commit career suicide, or it'd be made to look like she'd done so literally.

The CINCONI said nothing, so she carried on. "If I could, I'd like to put forward a potential name for INF-102."

Parangosky nodded "By all means Doctor, I think you've earned that right."

At this point, it was clear that the other Admirals had lost interest. Only Walker and Parangosky looked at her expectantly.

" _Renovatio_ " She said calmly, the Latin slipping smoothly from her tongue. The word had a special meaning to her, not one she was liable to divulge to the room, but she hoped the word itself would be poignant enough to have a chance.

There was another few seconds of silence, then Parangosky nodded "Renovatio. Fitting." She waved her hand, and the meeting was disbanded, the Section heads standing and leaving the darkened room without another word. No one would ever know that they were there. Walker winked at her as he passed, motioning her to wait behind with him.

Once the others had left, he cracked a smile. "Well done Salvia. I can't believe how quickly that went." He rubbed his silver hair absent-mindedly. "I've never been in a High Council meeting that lasted less than an hour." He collected himself, straightening his dress uniform. "Anyway, looks like it's time for some much needed R&R for you Doctor, you'll be back to the grindstone in no time."

She smiled as they began walking towards the doors out of the Dark Room "I could live with some time off. Know any good restaurants in Manassas?"

Walker shook his head "I'm not local, but I've heard good things about a place on 5th street. Hungarian-India fusion or something."

She snorted "Sounds like Gastrointestinal Armageddon if you ask me." As they passed through the doors, they slipped back into official mode. Formal speech, no joking about. She'd formed a close working relationship with the Admiral, and it never hurt to have their boundaries reinforced by formalities, remind them of who they were. Admiral Parangosky was waiting immediately outside.

Walker quickly snapped to attention, and the elderly woman waved him on, locking eyes with Salvia. As the Admiral walked away, she felt more fear than when one of infinity's primary fusion drives had had a near-meltdown back in '49.

"Relax. I'm just here to formally assign you to Project RENOVATIO, congratulations Doctor." She said before handing her a datapad and hobbling away down the corridor. She looked at the screen, noticing formal relocation orders to a remote system. The whole operation was being moved to the system, another ONI secrecy technique? Or did Parangosky know something the rest of them didn't? Almost certainly.

 **13:50, August 15** **th** **, 2552, City of Manassas, Alfold State, Ütközet Province, Reach**

"Doctor, we've got to get you out of here." Came Walker's voice over her chatter. "The Covenant are on Reach, all mobile naval assets are being evacuated ASAP."

Her heart sank into a pit of dread in her chest. She'd known this was inevitable. That they'd find the UNSC's largest and best defended colony, and burn it to ashes. Even the prospect of the second-largest Naval Fleet in the galaxy, or the array of 20 super-heavy Orbital Defence Platforms didn't change the fact that Reach was doomed.

"Where and when?" She demanded. She had been in the middle of her lunch, but her omelette now lay abandoned as she stood up from her seat, swiping her credit chip on the reader at her table to pay for the disappointing meal. The café she'd chosen was on the historical Baja Square in the centre of Manassas. The buildings around her were not the imposing skyscrapers of the city's financial districts, but low level shops, restaurants and boutiques scattered around the pedestrian precinct. People went about their daily lives, tired-looking parents dragged their children from shop to shop, teenagers loitered along the fringes of the square, and pigeons congregated in the space, their incessant cooing echoing around the marble steps and tiling. A water feature bubbled happily in the centre of the area, and it was next to this where she stood awaiting Walker's response.

"I need you to get to Tolna Tower, on the 15th floor there'll be an evac bird waiting for you. Salvia, this is serious. The Army's saying that they can't hold back the Covenant ground forces for much longer, they're going to issue a city-wide evacuation order in thirty minutes. You have until then to get to the tower before all hell breaks loose." He spoke clearly, disguising the panic in his voice well, but not completely.

"How the hell did the covenant get here without alerting the Navy?" She demanded, pushing past a crowd of shoppers, drawing stares and murmurs of disapproval.

"Section 1 hypothesise that their flagship used the recent meteor shower to slip in while cloaked, deployed an army of infantry and hunkered down under a camouflage canopy. They've only got one ship planetside at the moment, but it's a big one. CSO-class Supercarrier. Thing's 30km long, and now the camouflage generators have been disabled, they're out in the open. I heard about some Special Forces project to disable her, but nothing coming through yet." He informed her as she entered the directory, styled to look like a 20th century phone booth.

"Hang on Admiral, just getting directions." She said, and muted his feed on her chatter, quickly synching to the directory and finding the quickest route to the tower. By foot it would be 45 minutes, but if she caught a cab it would be 15 at most. She cued up their call on her chatter, the terrifying reality of the situation now sinking in, causing her to shake slightly. "Okay, I'll get a cab to the tower, what's the Army saying?"

He sighed heavily down the line "Not much at this point, which is worrying, if we assume 100% casualty rate, it'll be about 20 minutes until the city's hit. They're reinforcing the city's garrison with troops from Fort Witherson, but the 352nd Marine Division is on evac duty, touch-down in 15 minutes. Move it Doctor, and you may just ride the wave of destruction out of this place. Tolna Tower, top floor. The evac bird should take you right to an ONI prowler docked at Reach Station Gamma, the _Circumference_. Then it's a straight shot for Earth."

She nodded even though he couldn't see her, breathing steadily to calm herself. "Alright Admiral, see you aboard the _Circumference_ , Martinez out." She terminated the call and hailed a green-painted taxi, getting in quickly.

"Tolna Tower." She said to the driver, who turned around in his seat to face her, his eyebrows raised. She realised that in her black ONI dress uniform that she must look a little odd. Military uniform was never in fashionable circles anyway, but Reach was the centre of clothing and fashion within the colony worlds. "Get there in ten minutes and I'll make it worth your while."

At the promise of money, the driver nodded once and sped away from the curb, driving at breakneck speed. She took this time to think what was about to happen. Reach would fall, of that there was no doubt. It was just a matter of getting as many civilians out as possible, and taking as many of those bastards down with us.

"You're ONI." The driver said in a thick Hungarian accent, ending her brooding trance. She looked up and saw the man's beady eyes staring back at her in the mirror. "I know ONI when I see them. Only one reason why a spook overpays for a fast cab to the tallest tower in the city."

They turned down a narrow street, and she spotted the imposing tower ahead. "Important meeting."

He laughed deeply, shaking his head "I've served. 13th Marines. I know Spook Bullshit when I hear it. I also know that Fort Witherson is more active than I've seen it for years. Just tell me this. Do I have enough time to get my family?" He looked at her, eyes sad and desperate.

She didn't answer for a couple of minutes, and it was no time before the car slowed to a crawl and stopped. She swiped her credit chip, paying four times as much as was normal, money meant nothing today. She cleared her throat as she made ready to leave the car.

"Yes. Go now." She whispered, slipping out of the car and onto the pavement outside the lobby. Her cab sped away, light now firmly off. She hoped he made it out with his family, but in her heart of hearts she knew it was unlikely. She pushed through the double glass doors of the lobby and strode through the security checkpoint, scanning her ID badge as she went. There was almost no one around the brightly lit interiors, just security guards and MPs. All the soldiers clutched MA5C rifles in their hands, and looked impassive, although god knows how they actually felt. She was terrified, and she was being flown out of the danger zone, whereas these men would be flung directly into it in all likelihood.

"Ma'am." A young lieutenant stepped out from behind the security desk. He was wearing a black variant of the standard Marine BDU and he carried only his sidearm. His face was haggard and bleak, and his voice was strained and tired. "Admiral Walker told me you'd be here, your bird is en route, I'll show you the way."

She nodded and followed the soldier to the elevators. As the glass door closed behind them and the small cage ascended quickly, she was almost blinded by the sudden intense sunlight, which came through the glass walls of the elevator shaft. The city was spread out below her, the tall buildings of the financial district around her blocked most of the view for the first 30 seconds, but as the climbed the peaks of the Old Town's many churches and spires peaked into view. The Malon River flowed in between the two districts, cleanly slicing the city centre in half. Boats and hydrofoils meandered lazily along the ribbon of blue, enjoying the early afternoon sun. Such peace, serenity. Boy were they in for a shock.

"Your bird is Pelican Lima Seven Niner, patching her pilot through to your chatter." The Lieutenant said, and suddenly her ear buzzed with static, broken through at points by a distorted voice.

"Doc, you read me, doc?" Came the voice, vaguely female and with a strong aussie accent.

"Yes, I read you Lima Seven Niner." She responded a little awkwardly in front of the Lieutenant, who had elected to stare blankly at the city during her conversation.

"Good to hear from you ma'am, I'm inbound ETA 30 seconds, with a whole mess of hostile air right behind me, looks like the Air Force is going to be busy with this one!"

The Lieutenant tapped her shoulder, clearing his throat and joining the call "Pilot, Air base Farragut has dispatched Sparrowhawk and Skyhawk units. The City's initiated evacuation, the Colonial Militia is setting up defensive positions and anti-air batteries all over the city. 12th Infantry and 22nd armoured divisions are inbound." He pressed his earpiece into his ear as if trying to hear the repots better "And the UNSC _Kirkland_ has deployed its ODST contingent, they'll be dropping into the streets right about now."

As he spoke, jets of fire descended from the clouds, dozens of them, easily a hundred flaming asteroids which fell in regular patterns within the grid of roadways. "We're in this till the bitter end" The Lieutenant mumbled, fiddling with his pistol reflexively.

The long ride up to the landing pad on the top floor finally ended, and as the doors slid open, she barely had time to take in the blistering wind before her view was obstructed by the soaring nose of a Pelican Dropship as it crested the lip of the tower, performing a loop to level itself out. It was during this manoeuvre that she was able to take in the magnificent craft: at first glance it appeared to be a standard D77-TC Dropship, painted a drab olive green, the colour of all naval Pelicans. On closer inspection, it became apparent that this particular 'cart', as navy flyboys called them, had been through hell. Its rear port engine was sparking, and there were numerous scorch marks and dents to the angular metal airframe. It might have been a trick of the light, or her imagination playing tricks on her, but she could have sworn she could see the pilot grinning behind the controls.

The engines whined as the bulky ship came to a dead stop above the landing pad, and the rear door of the dropship hissed open, revealing the dropship to be full of heavily armoured Marines, who all ran out of the aircraft and across the landing pad towards the emergency stairwell on her left. Four of them carried the pieces to a mobile Anti-Air Missile Battery. She knew, because as a college graduate she'd designed the machine.

The nameless Lieutenant patted her on the back, shouting above the cacophony of the engines "This is my exit Doc, these guys'll need to know where to go. Good luck. God knows I'm envious of you getting out of here."

She turned to face him, and offered her hand, which he shook quickly. "You'll get out of here too, Lieutenant…" She suddenly realised that she hadn't asked his name.

"Haverson. Elias Haverson. ONI Section One." He said with a muted smile. "Get off-planet. Go. Whoever you are, you're clearly a lot more important in this war than I."

And with that, he was gone. She turned to face the rear of the dropship, jogging over and hauling herself inside. There was a worrying amount of dried blood on the floor of the crew compartment. She now knew why Marines called it the 'blood tray'. She walked towards the cockpit door, banging on it once with her fist. The metal slab retracted into the wall, and she took her place next to the grinning pilot. She donned a flight helmet and synchronised to the Pelican's systems before shaking hands with her Pilot.

"Doctor Salvia Martinez, ONI Section Three attaché"

"Staff Sergeant Lisa Monroe, but most call me 'Bird'" The pilot replied, smiling and manually checking the instruments. "We'll be off in no time Doc, just gotta get our escort arranged. Whoever you are, you turn a lot of heads, they're vectoring two Broadswords to escort us to Station Gamma. Most I normally get is a couple of Hornets."

"How does it look out there?" She asked, straight to the point, the pilot's smile slipped slightly before replying.

"The Army's holding its own out there, but there's just too many of them. So far they've kept the covvies within the Viery Territory, but once Manassas falls, the next town is the crossing into the next province. I just thank our lucky stars that their orbital support isn't directly intervening. Plus, a buddy of mine says that Spartans are planning to take it out."

"Take what out?"

Bird shook her head and rolled her eyes. "Oh, just the bloody great big Supercarrier in low orbit. It's not done much yet, just nailed a frigate or two. I reckon they must be looking for something, otherwise they'd just glass the place and move on."

Salvia remained quiet, not sure what rumours she'd heard in the ONI grapevine were appropriate to reveal. In reality, uttering any one of them could get her killed, and there was always paranoia about Section Zero planting false info within other Sections to see who was blabbing.

"Righto Doc, escort's ready, off we fuck." Bird drawled, pushing thrust up enough to nose them gently off of the deck.

Several things happened in that next brief moment. The most jarring of all these was the brilliant flash of white light in the sky. It was only a pinprick, but it was bright enough to outshine Epsilon Eridani. What she didn't know at the time was that the singularly bright spec of Reach's sky was in fact the very same CSO-class Supercarrier being sent to oblivion by an overloaded Slip Space Drive, at the cost of UNSC _Savannah_ and necessitating the sacrifice of a Spartan-II Supersoldier.

The next thing to register on her senses were the radar pings of two Broadsword Strike Fighters, one on either side of their flight path. They flooded her helmet with radio chatter but in that moment both she and Bird were too distracted, staring quizzically at the supernova of light on the horizon. Had they been listening, they would've heard the two pilots warning them of incoming Banshee fliers: the third and final 'thing' to happen.

Far, far too late, Bird jerked the joystick hard left, initiating a steep bank down the side of the tower. But she was too slow, and the lead Banshee's green energy cannon round struck the dropship directly on the rear left engine. The explosion flung both women around in their seats and added an almost uncontrollable spin to their movement. As they pulled away from the top of the tower and plummeted downwards, a single Scorpion Air-to-Air missile struck the lead banshee, ripping the alien machine to pieces.

While normally the destruction of a Banshee would be cause for celebration, in this particular case the aftermath of said destruction turned out to be rather… destructive. The largest lump of the metal aircraft continued on its path due to its incredible velocity right into the falling dropship, colliding with such force that it pressure welded purple metal alloy to olive grey composite.

The incredible impact knocked Salvia's head into the cabin wall, and her senses dulled. She was partially aware of the quantity of swearing and cursing by Bird next to her, and of the sickening spinning motion of the crippled dropship as it plummeted from the sky, engines screaming an awful lamenting wail. Red lights flashed all around her from various instrument panels, and screeching alarms blared, almost drowning out her own thoughts.

"Shit Doc, I can't hold her, we're going down." Bird shouted over the din, furiously wrestling with the flight controls, trying to gain some level of control. "Mayday mayday, Pelican Lima Seven Niner is hit, we're going down hard, I repeat, Pelican Lima Seven Niner is hit, I'm going to try to ditch her into the river."

There was a garbled reply, but the grating noises coming from the ruined comms system disguised the words behind them. Bird ripped off her helmet in frustration and dashed it against the dashboard. Her hands immediately flew back to the controls, pulling up to the point where Salvia could hear the metal of the stick creaking under stress.

All she could do was try not to throw up at the nauseating motion of their stricken craft and stare out of the window in terror at the rapidly approaching skyline swinging in and out of her view as they dropped.

"Doc! Brace yourself!" Bird yelled, finally giving up the ghost on controlling the dropship, assuming the commercial airline brace position by putting her head down with her fingers laced behind her head. Salvia copied her, closing her eyes and praying to the God she didn't believe in to help her. As the Ground Proximity alarm started blaring in her ears, her thoughts turned to her mother, alone in a Martian retirement community, and wondered if she'd ever see her again. Or her sisters, or nephews. Or the friends she'd met working on the _Hephaestus_. A single tear formed on her cheek as the dropship slammed into the side of a multi-storey office building with such force that her safety harness ripped itself from the framework, and she was thrown bodily around the cabin. She felt herself bounce off of three surfaces before finally coming to rest on the ceiling of the cabin. No pain registered, just a weary resignation as she slipped into the blackness eating at her vision.

 **Chief Petty Officer Jacob-209, August 16** **th** **2552, 10:50 Zulu Time, UNSC FOB WILLOW, Viery Territory, Reach**

"What's the next mission Jake?" The Spartan asked, not even looking up from her sniper rifle as she expertly disassembled it and polished it.

"Rescue Op, downtown Manassas, ONI attaché." He listed, rubbing his eyes as he slumped down onto a low bunk. The room the trio of Spartan Supersoldiers were sat in used to be the Officer's mess of this Forward Operating Base. But ever since the Covenant were found on Reach about three weeks ago, there hadn't been enough officers in the building to call it that. They had taken it over as their operations room, moved a couple of beds in and moved a full-sized holographic projection table into the centre of the space. Weapons and ammo were piled up in the corner, and one fully-equipped MJOLNIR Mobile Assembly Station was placed in the opposite corner.

"Sounds boring, we've got about ten thousand covvies to kick off our doorstep, and they're sending us in for one civilian? Seems like a gross misallocation of valuable military resources if you ask me." Sabina grunted from her bunk. She was still lying down in full armour, supposedly resting from their last Op, but Jake always knew when she was actually sleeping.

"I'm with Sab." Sara agreed, stripping her rifle again. She'd already fully cleaned the gun 4 times, but she wasn't really cleaning it, it was more of a comfort thing, a ritual to put her mind at ease. "What's so special about one ONI contractor?"

He sighed "When I asked they said it was classified. All they'd tell me is that she's worked on a Project Infinity, and that she's to be considered a Tier One Asset." He grabbed his helmet from the bedside table, trying to buff off a blackened streak with his gloved hands.

"Great, so while Noble Team is out destroying Supercarriers, we get babysitting duty?" Sara scoffed, finally placing her rifle next to her and resting her head in her hands.

"Looks that way. Don't worry, should be plenty challenging." He said, getting up and moving over to the tactical map of the town. "Until 1800 hours yesterday, Army, Marine and Air Force units were doing a pretty good job of holding back Covenant advances in the area. Until an SDV-class Heavy Corvette entered city airspace and provided direct support for advancing ground forces. As of now, the city's pretty much theirs. Some UNSC forces, including our asset, are trapped behind the advancing enemy lines, and there's not a hope in hell that any evac birds can get close, that corvette's got the air covered."

Sara and Sabina both rose from their positions as he spoke, gathering around the holographic display, complete with hovering Covenant ship. He highlighted a few key areas in the city, in the Financial district and riverside apartment complexes.

"We've observed two areas of resistance, one in the Miriam Trust Banking Tower, and another in some evacuated residential buildings." He said, and recordings of the frantic distress calls played quietly through the speakers. "At the end of the day, retrieving the ONI asset is our primary objective, but Fleet wants us to have a go at that corvette while we're at it."

Sara snorted derisively "And how the hell do they expect us to do that?"

"Shiva warhead." Sabina guessed. "Corvettes are the only covenant ships not to have energy shielding, so if you were to set off a nuke from any rooftop nearby, it would get caught in the blast."

He nodded, simulating the blast on the display. The holographic corvette buckled and crumpled, falling from its vulture-like height and crashing into the nearest highrise. "Exactly. Plus, General Tulius says that the Army has evacuated all civilians, so anything still in that city that isn't UNSC is a fair target. No collateral damage."

Sara nodded "So it sounds like we've got a game plan: find the civilian and evac her, same for the squaddies on the ground, set up the nuke, evac by road seems the most feasible way out of the city, then blow the bomb, taking out the corvette and damn near anything still in the city limits."

He chuckled "You make it sound so easy, but yeah, that's the general thing. ONI is really pushing for this asset to be extracted as they've been out of contact with their attaché for over 20 hours, so we're leaving in 10 minutes by Falcon. HALO jump, SYCAMORE chutes, gear up for urban warfare." He waved his hand through the hologram, signalling its disappearance as the other two Spartans started walking over to the makeshift armoury in the corner of the room.

He joined them in descending upon the pile of ammunition and weapons, quickly selecting and customising his equipment, starting with an MA5C Assault rifle. He slid extra magazines into various holsters and pockets on his armour, strapping extra musette bags across his shoulders. He snapped the rifle to the magnetic holster in the small of his back and retrieved his M392 DMR and its corresponding ammunition, smiling slightly at the familiar feel of the weapon in his hands.

Sabina selected her staple configuration of weaponry, an M90 Combat Shotgun as her primary with a backup Assault Rifle, and Sara too picked a familiar layout, stowing her customised SRS-99D-S2 Sniper rifle and brandishing an M7 SMG, attaching it to her thigh holster.

"Ready to go Jake" Sara announced, clamping the bulky black shape of the Sycamore Parachute system into her back. Sabina gave a thumbs up, and the trio took turns inspecting each other's rigs for any errors. Satisfied, he led his team out of the Ops Centre and out into the base.

"Helmets on, Op is live, TEAMCOM channel 7." He instructed them before they left the building, and each Spartan slid their respective helmets over their heads. He heard his neck seal hiss and his HUD become live, rapidly running system diagnostics before giving him the all clear. The other's and his Bio readings flashed in the corner of his vision, showing green across the board.

He keyed TEAMCOM, sending a single burst of static to confirm that they were good to go. He received two bursts back, accompanied by a change in the icon for the two other Spartans on his HUD.

As they marched through the busy base towards the landing pad, many heads turned their way, Marines stopped their weapon cleaning to stare at the sight of three fully-armoured Commandos striding at unnatural pace through their vision. Sometimes he hated the attention they got. It always seemed to alienate him and his team from the rest of the UNSC, that somehow because they looked different from everyone else that they weren't quite human, not on the same level as 'normal' soldiers. Weren't they all fighting for the same cause? The same enemy? Some of his fellows chose to believe that ordinary soldiers were jealous of the Spartans' supreme combat ability, some chose to hide behind the mantra that they were 'special', and were chosen by the UNSC to save the Human race, and others chose to simply not care at all, just hide behind the armour, do their job and turn a deaf ear to the mutterings of others.

Personally, he found himself in a rather unique situation of feeling jealousy towards the normal soldiers, because they could have a life, socialise, get married, have children. While he understood that the Spartans had to make sacrifices for the betterment of humanity, he couldn't help but wonder every now and then, what if?

A flashing icon on his HUD interrupted his thoughts as their transport cleared the base's air space and descended towards them, the two turboprops tilting upwards as it touched down gently onto the deck. They quickly strapped themselves in to three of the five seats in the open-air crew compartment with him facing the rear of the aircraft and the other two facing him.

"Spartans, we're taking a longer route than planned, covenant air forces are closing the gaps around the city. We'll reach the DZ and Drop height of 30,000 feet in 20 minutes." The pilot came over their communications, sounding haggard.

Jake didn't respond, sensing that this pilot wasn't exactly in a conversational mood. Of all the UNSC Defence Force, the Air Force had perhaps taken the most beating on Reach, even more so than the Army or Marines. He'd read a report on Waypoint just this morning that the 32nd Air Wing had been utterly decimated around New Alexandria, with over 90% casualty rate. The statistics really didn't do the horrors justice, but it was the only way for such a massive scale of destruction to be contextualised. It was always this way: a few hundred Marines dying to defend a school; that was a tragedy, but an entire Naval Battlegroup vanishing without a trace? That was too much melancholy and loss to be dealt with by the human mind. So you compartmentalise, bury yourselves in statistics to try and comprehend the damage.

"Jake?" Sabina's concerned, Eastern-European accented voice cut through his miasma, jerking him back to the present. "You okay?"

"Yeah." He lied, turning his head slightly. "Just tired."

"Same here" Sara muttered, the sun glinting off of the non-regulation war paint striped down either side of her Mjolnir Scout helmet. "I'd kill for some downtime right about now."

Jake scoffed "Yeah, if you could tell the covenant to kindly stop invading, then I'm sure HR will get right on that."

They lapsed into silence, watching the ground fall far below them as the Falcon made the long trip up, well above the cloud layer so that the view below them was of a sea of white. He never got bored of this view. The worst part was that in a few brief minutes he knew him and his fellows would leave the peace and serenity of this heavenly landscape and descend into the chaos and destruction hiding below the deceptively passive cloudscape.

He'd always had a reputation amongst the Spartans as being a dreamer, always drifting off when there wasn't an immediate task to perform, reading too far in classes and becoming bored when the others took too long to catch up.

"Alright Spartans, we're 3 minutes out, the city's right below us. I can't make a second run, the Corvette's already trying to get a read on us." The pilot said, and Jake keyed confirmation. The Spartans unfastened their restraints and made ready to jump, attaching their weapons to secure hard points around their armour.

The engines of the Falcon changed their pitch as they finally levelled out, and the rotors shifted from being almost entirely upright, like a simple helicopter's, to forward facing, accelerating them forwards at their designated altitude.

"We're over the Drop Zone, go, go, go!" The pilot yelled, and a red light in between the three on the ceiling turned green. Jake gave the other two a quick thumbs up before he stood up from his seat and dove out of the aircraft.

His own breathing became magnified in his helmet as he left the drone of the Falcon's engines far behind. He stretched his arms out to slow his descent slightly so that his team could catch up, flipping over onto his back. The Falcon was a mere speck in the distance now, slowly continuing its journey onwards, but his attention was focussed on the two rapidly approaching dots as they broke through the thick cloud layer, obscuring his vision for a brief moment.

"Incoming two-oh-nine!" Sara called as she punched a hole through the clouds, trailing wispy vapour and zoomed closer, slowly spiralling down towards him.

"Just try and catch me one-seventy" He laughed, allowing his arms to be pushed in front of him as he fell, accelerating more.

This carried on for the next 15,000 feet, each Spartan taking it in turns to try and chase another. It might seem childish to an outsider, but Jake knew that these were the precious moments when they could afford to let their inner children out. Once they reached 10,000 feet, he buzzed them once on TEAMCOM, and as one they flipped over on to their fronts.

The city was spread out below him, but the urban sprawl below them had been radically changed since the last SATCOM imagery. The most noticeable addition was the curved red/purple shape of the SDV-class heavy corvette dominating the airspace about 7000 feet below them. Its menacing hull cast long shadows over the Financial District's skyscrapers. Many of the buildings below showed evidence of assault, the police headquarters had been all but obliterated and the town hall was pockmarked by blackened plasma scarring. As they dropped lower, Jake could even make out the masses of Covenant Infantry and armoured support crowding the streets, milling about. From the looks of things the enemy had set up some sort of command centre in the Municipal Park, a massive domed prefabricated structure around which thousands upon thousands of troops swarmed.

The air space was busy too, Banshees, Phantoms, Spirits, even a couple of the heavily armoured Lich assault craft lumbered around above the buildings, taking the occasional pot shot at random structures. He shifted his eyes away from the centre of town and over to their designated landing zone, an abnormally tall skyscraper in the Pomaz District where the Asset's Chatter had last been detected. The district was otherwise filled with low residential buildings, interrupted only by the mega-sized ReachMart shopping centre towards the Northern end of the area and the scattering of small green areas among the familiar dull canvas of grey and beige..

As they approached the 2000 feet mark, he buzzed once more on TEAMCOM, signalling them to pull their chutes. He didn't really need to tell them, they knew the protocol for HALO jumps perfectly, but it was more for his benefit than theirs, plus, it would make sure that if one of them messed up, he wouldn't be held responsible. Cheerful.

He punched the button on the strap to his chute, and felt the sudden jerk as the canopy deployed, releasing a jet black parafoil parachute. The toggles for directional control flopped down in front of his shoulders, and he grabbed them, testing that they worked fully, which they did. He steered himself towards the landing pad on top of the building, battling with vicious cross-winds as he approached.

The metal landing pad let out a satisfying dull thump as he touched down and pushed the parachute recall button, at which the canvas was quickly pulled back into the parachute's casing. There were similar noises made as Sara and Sabina landed on either side of him, and Sabina turned to face him as her parachute retracted.

"I spotted our Asset's crashed Pelican on the way down, looks pretty embedded in the building about twelve stories down. There's a lot of fire damage to the nearby structure." She said as she shouldered her shotgun "Anyone still inside that thing is dead."

"Slow down there Captain Optimism" Sara said as Jake took the lead towards the stairway. "We'll find out when we get there."

They walked quickly down the stairs and were soon walking towards a blackened door. He tried the handle, but found that the intense heat of jet fuel had actually welded the metal of the door to the frame. With a healthy dose of persuasion, namely a swift kick from Sabina, the door eventually gave in, and the three stepped slowly into the charred room. It could have once been an office building, but the view before them was of twisted, melted metalwork, smouldering sections of floor and scorched walls. At the other end of the open space, the warped metal hull of a Pelican Dropship poked through the open space where the window should be.

Sabina whistled "I hate to agree with you Sara, but you're right, anyone inside that thing is toast."

He shook his head, sighing "The asset isn't dead until I see a body."

He advanced towards the wreckage slowly, wary of unstable areas. Having confirmed that the floor was still good, he moved towards the plexiglass cockpit canopy, noting that most of it was missing, and that there were smooth cut marks around the edges of the major gap in the glass. He took a peek inside, grimacing as he discovered a scorched skeleton in the pilot's seat, nothing left but bones to identify whichever poor soul met their demise in this metal can.

He stood up and turned around, walking away from the crash "Only one body, most likely the pilot's. And the cockpit view screen has been cut away by something, not just shattered." He paused, drumming his fingers on his thigh in thought. "I don't think that the ONI attaché is dead. Someone came and rescued her, cut through the plexiglass and pulled her out. We can only hope that the pilot was dead and that they didn't bother trying to get them out before the ship caught fire."

Sara nodded curtly "Makes sense, but why didn't Intelligence know about this? Surely any UNSC unit pulling an ONI uniform out of a dropship would call it in?"

He shrugged "I don't know. Long range radio transmissions have been patchy at best, maybe they've tried."

Sabina cocked her head sideways as if listening to something. "Nothing on any UNSC Frequencies. Nothing at all, which is odd."

He frowned inside his helmet. Something didn't add up here. "Hold on, let's try reaching out."

He set his frequency to ALL and started broadcasting his voice. "This is Spartan-209 to Doctor Salvia Martinez, do you read me Doctor?"

Nothing.

Sara shrugged, Sabina kicked a warped piece of metal out of the missing window.

He tried again "Doctor, if you can hear me, respond. This is Chief Petty Officer Jacob-209 broadcasting on all channels."

Nothing but static for a moment. Then came a woman's voice, speaking clearly and slowly.

"This is Doctor Martinez, the Covenant is using radio broadcasts to track our locations, so you need to go radio silent. We're relocating after this transmission. Protect and Serve. Martinez out."

The radio went dead again.

"So even a hired spook is still a spook I guess." Sara grunted "'Protect and Serve'… The Police station?"

Sabina nodded, moving towards the door to the stairway. "It's as good a guess as any, plus I fear we may be about to have our hands full, we should move."

"Agreed, Sab, take point, Sara next, I'll take rear guard, get us down to street level and to the nearest station." He ordered, raising his rifle and backing up towards the door.

"Might be a bit late for that." Sab whispered, and he looked around confused. Then he spotted a swarm of covenant fliers streaming towards them, already firing plasma weaponry. The already blackened floor now took on a shiny iridescence where fresh plasma rounds struck, throwing tiny globules of molten ash up at them, flaring their shields.

They moved as one, all three Spartans bundling into the stairwell to escape the onslaught. The door behind them caught a few rounds and began to glow, but they didn't have much time to observe it as they were already sprinting down the narrow stairwell.

"Their radio tracking is fast, we need to link up with the asset ASAP." Sara commented as they descended the floors.

"No complaints here" Sabina muttered.

Suddenly, the trio skidded to a halt about eight floors below the Pelican crash site. They had all felt it, the shuddering moans of the building's superstructure which resonated up the shaft, echoing off of the hard concrete walls.

"Let's get eyes on, now." He said, barging through the exit door onto a deserted office floor and jogging over to the window, knocking the floor-to-ceiling glass pane out of its housing with one swift kick. He crept up to the edge and looked directly below them. What he saw solidified an icy block of dread in the pit of his stomach: far below their position, about 50 floors down, a ring of purple and crimson covenant fliers circled lazily around the building, Banshees and Phantoms making up the bulk of the numbers. Every single aircraft was concentrating their fire on one particular floor, a stream of bright plasma connecting the floating hulls with glowing metalwork.

"They're trying to bring the building down." Sara whispered, shaking her head disbelievingly. "Clever bastards."

"Then we'll have to be cleverer. Sara, where's the Police station from here?" He snapped, rapidly formulating a half-plan in his mind.

"South West, about a kilometre. Why?" She responded, following him over to the corresponding corner of the building.

"Because this building isn't going to be around much longer. We need to leave." As soon as he finished speaking, the building around them groaned again, and they could all feel the supporting framework of the building moving slightly all around them, on the verge of collapse.

Sabina moaned. "Why can't there be an express elevator down?"

Sara stowed her sniper rifle and needlessly tightened the straps for her parachute "Because then it'd be boring. Last one down has to do all the paperwork for this Op."

At that, the 500 kilogram Spartan threw herself through the gap in the window, disappearing from view in an instant. He edged back towards the sheer drop and saw the black canopy open and unfurl directly below them, heading for the police station which had been marked by a green icon on their HUDs.

Sabina moved up next to him, checking her own parachute. "I would have tried to stop her, but we both know it would never have worked." She shrugged, an action notoriously difficult to perform in MJOLNIR. "This asset better be worth it. I hate having my feet just hanging there, drifting along in space. Give me a rifle and a solid patch of ground to fight on any day."

"I remember. First time we did a drop in Training you passed out in your harness." He said, fastening the webbing around his chest. "Let's go, I got your back. I'll make sure I'm last down too, I do all the paperwork anyway."

She laughed and he could tell from the genuine sound that she was smiling behind the visor. "Thanks Jay." Nodding, his comrade hesitantly jumped out of the open window, plummeting downwards.

He took a couple of steps back and from a running start jumped out of the building into the sky above the city, but before he could take in the view or pull his chute, his static-filled radio burst into life revealing the clear tones of Admiral Walker, the man who'd assigned them this mission.

"Chief Petty Officer, I don't expect a response, but I'm informing you that a massive covenant fleet just slipped in system and is heading this way, battlegroups are moving to engage, but it means that that corvette just got bumped a ways down our list of priority targets, so no nuke. I may be able to appropriate one MAC shot from ODP _Eposz_ , but that's it, choose your time wisely Spartan, Walker out."

As the Admiral spoke in his ear, Jake pulled his chute and started his gentle descent away from the building, digesting the new information quickly. He didn't dare respond, and was glad he hadn't as a dark shadow crossed over him, causing him to look up. The dominating figure of the corvette hung directly above the tower, casting ominous shadows across him and the streets below.

He yanked on the steering toggles on either side of him, taking him into a steep dive. Far below and behind him, the circle of alien aircraft spewed plasma into the belly of the building, the entire storey and its surroundings glowing white hot, melting and collapsing on itself. The monolithic skyscraper groaned audibly, a low defeated sound, and the surrounding floors around the gap collapsed on the northern side, shattering the glass windows all the way up the tower, fracturing like a spider's web. At this, the flight of covenant aircraft sped away from the area. Like rats from a sinking ship.

"She's coming down!" Sabina exclaimed, and before he or Sara could respond, the lateral lines of the corvette started glowing a dull red, quickly rising in intensity until his visor's polarising filter maxed out and he was forced to look away. With an almighty crack, the ship's point defence laser weapons discharged, slicing through the tower like a hot knife through butter. He had to crane his neck to look behind him as the bisected tower toppled northwards, swatting a stray banshee from the sky as it fell.

The chunk of building, a good 40% of the total length, crashed into the ground, the higher floors connecting with the higher floors of smaller buildings on the other side of the river, pulverising metal framework and stone facades. The trailing end of the section landed in the river, the molten edge of the structure sending up a cloud of steam as it touched the clear water.

"Note to self, avoid corvette." Sara muttered, dragging his attention back to his team and their comparably gentle descent to terra firma. With their ultra-modern SYCAMORE parachutes, the Spartans could achieve a glide ratio of about 3, meaning that for every 100 metres they descended, they could travel 300 metres along the ground horizontally. Even with the high ratio, they couldn't make it all the way to the police station.

"Set down on the green, 12 o'clock" He ordered, and acknowledgment lights blinked on his display and the two other black canopies angled towards their target.

"Anyone else get the impression that the covenant really don't want us finding that asset?" Sara asked as the trio touched down, retracting their chutes and jogging out of the park and down the abandoned street.

"I'm starting to wish she'd died in the crash." Sabina grumbled, flicking a speck of debris that had fallen into a recess in her armour.

"I'm sure she'd be delighted to hear that when we find her." He huffed. Part of him was with her. The Covenant were on Reach, the UNSC was on the verge of being defeated on one of its prime military hubs, and here three whole Spartan-II Super Soldiers were mucking about rescuing some Engineer. This Dr Martinez had better be worth it.

 **Dr Salvia Martinez, ONI attaché, 16:17, August 15** **th** **, 2552, City of Manassas**

 **2.5 hours after crash**

"Bird? Bird!" She mumbled, shaking the pilot's shoulders weakly. Her harness had not broken as easily as Salvia's had, and the limp body of the pilot hung from the ceiling, well, the floor of the cockpit, but the ceiling of the upside-down version. She struggled to rise from the bank of instruments she'd ended up resting on, and winced as jolts of pain flared in her chest.

She raised a hand and felt Bird's neck for a pulse. Nothing. She stared dumbstruck, too in shock for the airman's death to really register. She crawled into the rear of the cockpit and tried the door controls, which mercifully resulted in the door swooshing open.

A wall of heat met her, scorching her face. She slapped the control panel, coughing as a billowing cloud of acrid smoke entered the cramped space before the door slammed shut again. Coughs continued to force themselves from her throat, leaving her hoarse, blinking tears from her eyes, which stung and reddened in the chemical-tainted smoke.

She shuffled around, eventually contorting herself so she faced out of the Plexiglas view screen, which gave her a fantastic view of the inside of an office building, cubicles and desks as far as she could see. She pounded her fist on the glass to no avail. Of course she couldn't break through, the damn thing was designed to take several hundred small-calibre bullets before it so much as chipped.

She looked around her, searching desperately for some way out of this metal coffin, painfully aware of the rapidly increasing heat within the cabin: it was already approaching sauna-level temperature, and sweat ran down her face, mixing with soot in the air to form a black layer of grime on her face. There was nothing in the cockpit that could help her, no laser cutter or release mechanism, heck at this point she'd settle for a can opener.

She screamed in frustration and desperation, immediately regretting it as she coughed, convulsing violently. Resigned to her fate, she searched the dead pilot for her sidearm, unslinging the bulbous M6 pistol from the holster and cocking it. There was no way that she'd go out burned alive, the quick and painless death she was now choosing for herself seemed much more bearable.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you Doc." Came a voice over her chatter, accompanied by a dull knocking from behind her.

She spun around, readied pistol still in her hand and saw a squad of armoured soldiers in the previously empty office, led by a familiar black-armoured man crouching in front of the view screen.

"Haverson!" She exclaimed, moving over to the glass, coughing and wheezing. "Get me out of here!"

"Simmons, give me that laser, now!" He barked as he turned around to one of the other soldiers, and when he turned back he was clutching a large pen-like object. "Doc, back up and cover your eyes, this is a 20 kilowatt cutter, even indirect observation can blind."

She pushed herself as far back as she could stand in the heat and closed her eyes shut tightly, listening the crackling of the high-power laser cutting the thick composite. 20 seconds later, she heard the device cease its loud efforts and felt a cool breeze caress her cheek. She opened her eyes and crawled forward towards the light, ignoring the heavenly imagery as she clambered over the warm edge of the hole in the view screen and out onto the cool office floor, struggling to rise to her feet, head dizzy with smoke inhalation.

"Easy doc, easy, somebody grab her a chair!" the Lieutenant yelled, and a young Private wheeled over a swivel chair, which she collapsed on to, breathing raggedly, shaking slightly.

It was a good while before she made herself look up, trying to look apologetic for her lack of composure. "I'm no soldier, I'm not good with guns and bullets and aliens."

He shrugged "No one expects you to be Doc, that's why you've got us. You okay? What about the pilot?"

She shook her head "No pulse, I'm fine, I'm good." She got to her feet, breathing slowly and deeply, trying to compose herself.

He nodded "That's a damn shame. If you're good to go Doc, we need to move. Covenant's moving in hard, we were almost run down just getting here." She looked around and saw the other soldiers moving towards the office doorway, rifles up and ready, a couple of them had minor plasma scorching on their battle armour.

He reached out his hand "Give me your sidearm." She complied, and he expertly took the weapon apart and inspected it, grunting approvingly. "This is one fine M6, custom grip, engraved slide, explosive rounds. You certified with the M6D?" He held it out to her.

She nodded, tentatively taking the bulky pistol back and holding it in her hands, getting a feel for the balance of it. "I'm ready when you are. What's the plan?"

He waved for her to follow him, and she did so, walking out of the office room, out into the floor's lobby and into the emergency stairwell. "Right now Doc, my plan is pretty much 'don't get shot, don't let you get shot, get out of the city'. Everything else is up in the air." He informed her as they bolted downstairs behind the heavy footfalls of the Marine squad.

"Hey, I like the plan so far." She muttered, already out of breath as they sprinted down the stairs. Why hadn't she worked out more? I mean, she was no slouch, and she was comfortable with her body's look, but it really helped to have a little bit more stamina.

"I'm going to patch you into the UNSC Comms networks so you can keep in touch if we get separated." He called over his shoulder, and suddenly her ear was buzzing with military signals, and she had to mute the extraneous channels.

They finally made it to the ground floor, bursting out into the lobby of the legal office that owned the building. The soldiers strode purposefully towards the large glass doors, cocking weapons and slipping into silence. It was only now that she heard the orchestra of war; nearby, all around them, the rattle and cracks of small arms fire echoed around the empty streets, further away, every once in a while she would hear the thunderous roar of something much heavier, or the high-pitched screams of aircraft, both those which she recognised as jet engines and the softer more menacing whining of impulse drives.

"Recon Six Niner, this is Kilo 22, what's the situation of East 13th Street, around the Derico Legal offices?" The burly sergeant inquired over the radio.

There was a moment's pause, then a heavily accented voice came through "Kilo 22, I'm seeing a high enemy presence in that area, nearest friendly zone is 10th street, roughly 800 metres south. I spot about two dozen infantry, no mechanicals, but there's a couple of gators ordering the little guys about, could be trouble. Over."

The Sergeant swore loudly, shouldering his Assault rifle before responding. "Copy that Recon Six Niner."

Haverson took over "Overlord, any assets that can give us Close Air Support as we re-join with friendly forces? Enemy lines have moved forward past us."

"Affirmative Kilo 22, I've got a Hornet in the AO, call sign Sierra 250, re-routing to provide CAS. Warning, he can't stay for long, enemy air presence is too strong in that sector. Acknowledge."

"Acknowledged Overlord, Kilo 22 out." He responded, motioning the team to exit the building. She followed closely, trying to keep as low as possible as they jogged down the stairs from the doors to street level along a wall. When they got to the end of it, Haverson held his fist up above his shoulder, peeking his head around the obsidian monolith.

"Two Elites, about 20 grunts, going door to door." He mumbled, withdrawing behind cover. "They're focussing on the other side of the street for now." He turned to the Marines "I'm going to signal CAS to open fire as you toss some frags over there. Divide them with the grenades, conquer with the Hornet." He showed no sign of the lethargy and exhaustion he'd shown earlier in Tolna Tower.

They nodded eagerly, resting their rifles against the wall and priming grenades. Haverson nodded and waved them out from behind the wall. She moved up next to him, craning her neck to try and see live Covenant for the first time, but before she could glimpse the genocidal conglomerate, Haverson pushed her back, shaking his head and talking into his microphone.

"Hornet's on the way" He said quietly, counting down with his fingers. On one, all five of them tossed their devices, immediately taking cover behind the bus stop outside the building. As they threw themselves to the ground, the whine of engines that had been steadily rising in volume suddenly reached a crescendo, and the roar of the AV-14 Hornet VTOL deafened her as it soared over an office building and opened up on the unsuspecting group of aliens.

The cluster of grenades detonated before the hornet's rounds could strike, flaring the two elites' shield and knocking them and their grunt subordinates to the floor. She couldn't quite see how many grunts the grenades had killed, Haverson was still holding her back. All she could hear was the thunderous booming of missile detonation couples with the sickly thwacks of 30mm shells tearing through flesh. After about 20 seconds, the din halted, and Haverson peeked around the corner.

"That's a lot of dead covenant" He whistled, before switching to Comms "Good effect on target Sierra 250, much obliged."

"Copy that Kilo 22, Sierra 250 RTB." Came the pilot's voice, and the vehicle tilted its engines and powered away.

"Move out, we got somewhere to be!" The sergeant yelled, and the group moved away from the building along the street, past the body parts and bright blue blood where the alien squad had been moments before. She gagged on the nauseating mixture of smells, the charred alien flesh, the whiff of explosive residue hanging in the air and the acrid smell of melted tarmac were among just a few of them.

She was hastily bundled along down the business districts high building-sided streets, and behind the desperate sounds of her ragged breath, the clinking of the Marines' equipment and the stamping of their boots on the sidewalk, she could hear the sounds of the city falling. In the background there was the faded blaring of the city's evacuation alarm from a couple of streets over combined with distant heavy artillery bombardment, sounding like the almighty beating of a colossal drum. Much closer by came the harsh sounds of intense gunfire, a sound which she noted that they were headed directly towards.

"Stack up!" The Sergeant half whispered half shouted, and the group threw themselves up against the tyres of a huge tanker truck.

"Recon Six Niner, this is Kilo 22, what's the situation with the street in front of us, over?" Haverson asked

"From up here, looks like friendly forces are to your right, enemy to your left, your intersection is right in the middle of no man's land. Friendly call-sign is Tango 9"

"Copy that." Haverson looked irritated as he turned to the rest of them. "This is a problem. I was hoping that we could re-join friendly lines with no problem, but looks like we're going to have to shoot our way in."

She gulped hard, tightening her hold on her sidearm until her knuckles turned white. She was already miles out of her depth, she'd never even shot at anything but a paper target before, how the hell could she survive this?

"Tango 9, this is Kilo 22, do you read?"

Nothing, for a couple of seconds, then came the thunderous roar of a high-calibre gun discharging, propelling the payload past them towards the enemies to their left. A dull detonation followed the screaming of the shell, and judging from the size of it, she guessed that it had to belong to one of the UNSC's many MBTs or heavily armed APCs. Most likely a Scorpion MBT, just because the sheer quantity produced and fielded.

"We read you Kilo 22, what can we do for you?"

"We're just south of the intersection of 15th and Main street, behind a Traxus oil tanker, we've got a tier 1 asset and need to get behind friendly lines, requesting suppressive fire on enemy positions until we can join you, over." Haverson rattled off, peeking his head around one side of the truck's fender to get a good view of the enemy.

The response came through almost immediately. "Roger that, we've got readings on your IFF tags, starting suppressive fire."

Instantly the volume of gunfire increased tenfold, accompanied by the chattering of an HMG. The Marines all jumped up and started sprinting around the truck towards the right, and she had only just gotten to her feet when Haverson grabbed her arm and pulled her after them.

She shook him off of her and ran away from the truck, slipping onto the sidewalk of the main street through Manassas. She remembered fondly her first day on leave here, looking through all the shops, planning her meals in the high-end restaurants lining the road, but now most of those establishments lay in ruin, and glass fronting shattered, stone facades ruined, nothing but rubble. A couple of the high stone buildings had massive craters in their sides, and rubble littered the streets in between the maze of abandoned cars and trucks.

About a hundred metres distant, she saw their goal, a row of sandbags and carefully placed cars shielding friendly forces, which consisted of at least two dozen grey-fatigued soldiers firing past them, as well as the flat angular turret of a Scorpion poking above a sandbag wall, using its coaxial machine gun to great effect. The 90mm gun swung around and belched another shell, eliciting jolts of searing pain from her inner ear. Her hearing dulled, replacing all but the most bass heavy sounds with a head-splitting ringing. She gasped in pain but kept running, her step faltering for a brief second as she dragged her eyes up and saw the flashes of light as the Marines on the barricade continued firing, their gunshots now dull thuds.

As she ran towards the gap in the defensive line, she risked craning her head around for a view of the suppressed enemies; the battleground behind them was covered in craters from explosive weapons and huge black scorch marks from plasma weaponry, about 300 metres behind them she spotted several of the Grunt-type aliens cowering behind a car, only the tips of their methane tanks visible, quivering in fear. One of their tanks was punctured by a lucky rifle round, and it detonated, sending a flare of blue flame up from behind the vehicle and showering the nearby are with both his and his comrades' entrails.

Haverson yelled something over his shoulder, but his voice was lost on her damaged ears

She followed suit, tearing her eyes away from the enemies behind to focus on the allies in front. There was a tiny gap in the line between the end of the sandbags and the stone wall of the bank next to it, just wide enough to fit her. She forced herself in the gap and was quickly pulled behind the line by Haverson.

She sat down heavily, panting and wheezing, her vision tunnelling slightly. Haverson leaned over her, yelling something and waving over an Army Medic, who looked closely into her eyes and ears, conferring with Haverson and presumably telling him that she couldn't hear them. Haverson nodded slowly, looking at her with pity and grabbed a data-pad from the Medic, typing out a message and showing her.

Are you okay?

She just nodded, her throat too sore for words. He seemed satisfied, and waved the Medic away, touching his earpiece and talking rapidly. He held up the tablet again after his brief conversation had concluded.

Vehicle on its way, hang tight.

She nodded again and struggled to her feet, using him for balance. He looked concerned, but she patted his arm and mouthed _I'll be fine_. He gave her a thumbs up and walked away towards an Army Lieutenant hanging around near the barricade. While they exchanged salutes and shook hands, she wandered over towards the Scorpion tank, the ringing in her ears subsiding somewhat.

The Medic came over to her holding two tiny beads of foam in one hand, offering them to her. "Here you go ma'am, should keep your ears in one piece." His voice was distorted, but audible, and she graciously took the adaptive earplugs from him, smiling in thanks as he shouldered his rifle, an old MA37, and walked back to the line, where the shooting had died down a little.

She pushed the earplugs into her ear canals, where they automatically expanded to fit their shape. She was familiar with the design, she'd used many like it aboard the _Hephaestus_ to protect her hearing from the barrage of shipbuilding tools that were in action pretty much 24/7. The smart foam would detect any sounds above the safe limit of 85 decibels and change conformation to block the sounds, but would relax when sound level were normal. This ensured the best combination of hearing protection and situational awareness during downtime.

She turned her attention to the back of the tank, where copious amount of grey smoke/steam was rising from the open engine cover. A mechanic was leaned over the open compartment, fiddling with wires and tubes, swearing loudly. She checked out the profile of the vehicle, taking in the stripped down tread covers and bulked up turret armour. It was a 5th generation M808B Scorpion, and she knew enough about the machine to fix it.

"Soldier, what's the matter?" She asked as she approached, rolling up the sleeves of her ONI uniform.

"I don't know ma'am, she just up and died on me, no engine power at all." The mechanic threw his arms up in the air exhaustedly.

"She been serviced recently?" She asked, a nugget of information she'd overheard in the officers' mess on the _Hephaestus_ coming to the forefront of her mind. "How's the oil pressure been lately?"

"What with the end of the world, we haven't had much time for a service." The mechanic answered. "And the pressure's been shit for days, why?" He looked puzzled, and wiped his face with his hand leaving a black grease mark on his cheek.

"The M808B-5 is about to have a low profile recall/mass-service issued. Some researcher on Mars has proved that after a few hundred hours of use, one of the primary coolant lines shakes itself loose from its housing, have a look at it and use some duct tape to secure it, I guarantee this beast will be running like a dream in no time." She informed, slapping the man's back and walking over to Haverson, who was subtly beckoning her over.

"Thanks, I hope." The soldier muttered, reaching for his tool kit as she walked over to the Lieutenant.

Haverson looked like someone had just told him his mother had died, his hands were balled up into fists, his gaze downturned, and his face ghostly white.

"What's wrong?" She asked tentatively

"You know that flash in the sky before your bird went down? That was a CSO-class supercarrier being destroyed by a team of Spartans. Its escort is mostly engaged in ground operations across the continent, and one of them, an SDV-class corvette is inbound on this location. ETA 30 minutes." He said, shaking his head sadly.

"Shit." She muttered, not really grasping the importance of this revelation "What does this mean?"

"It means, Doc, that your extraction just became a hell of a lot harder, speaking of which." He trailed off as the sound of a throaty engine loudened. He jogged over towards the Army Lieutenant and shook his hand, thanking him.

As he did so, the engine noise tripled as an M12 Warthog rounded the corner and came to a halt in front of her. The Marine Corporal in the driving seat bundled out and saluted her smartly, automatically respecting the ONI uniform.

"At ease Marine, the Lieutenant is over there." She said, smiling as Haverson moved over next to her, exchanging salutes with the young Marine.

"Corporal" He nodded. "Did you bring the body armour?"

"Yes sir, I've got a full set in the passenger seat. Ma'am, right this way, I'll get you suited up in no time." The Marine beckoned her forward, and she followed him around the front grill and vicious-looking tusks of the Hog. He leaned into the passenger seat and pulled a black version of the Marine BDU out, draping it over her neck and quickly fastening all the straps before handing her a black Helmet, which she gingerly forced down over her ears, flicking down the integrated visor which covered her eyes and provided a basic HUD.

She was instantly overloaded by the array of information thrown up all over her HUD, and quickly stripped it down to only the ammunition counter for her sidearm, which had automatically linked with the helmet systems, and the radio channel display.

She helped the Corporal affix the last components of the BDU, the leg armour and boot covers, which seemed ridiculously unnecessary to cover her simple leather work shoes. When the Corporal finished tightening the straps and activating the Nano-fibre assemblies in her ONI uniform which adhered to the armour plating, she looked similar to the Lieutenant, clad in protective black armour.

"Do a little twirl for me Doc." Haverson smirked, hauling himself into the driver's seat of the vehicle and starting the engine with a meaty rumble.

"Bite me." She muttered in response, walking around a little to get a feel for the mobility of the heavy armour, rolling her shoulders and stretching her limbs. She climbed aboard the Warthog, struggling initially to scale the jeep's 36-inch ride height, but after a couple of attempts she managed, slinking into the passenger seat.

"Corporal, man the 50." Haverson instructed the marine, who expertly vaulted onto the vehicles rear end, seizing the controls of the triple-barrelled M41 Light Anti-Aircraft-Gun and traversing around to scan the air around them.

"All right then, hold on to something Doc, these things aren't built for comfort." Elias warned, shifting into 1st gear and pressing the accelerator to the floor.

Her entire body was forced into the seat as the M12's fuel cell split water into hydrogen and used the flammable gas to go from 0-60 in no time at all. They sped down street after street through the debris and destruction of war, many buildings were pockmarked with plasma scorches, and every now and then a flight of banshee fliers would duck underneath the level of the skyscrapers to fire into the streets below at the thousands of UNSC troops preparing defensive positions.

They skidded to a halt in front of a column of slow-moving Scorpion tanks heading towards the front line, their moaning engines adding to the sounds of fervent activity. She'd never seen so much military in one location, but there they were; a column of at least a hundred and fifty UNSC Marines, a whole Company, all of whom were heavily armed, jogging in formation alongside the tanks down the sidewalk, chanting the UNSC Marine cadence in a call-response fashion, the Sergeants of each Platoon yelling out first followed by the bulk of the Marines in response.

"Helljumper, Helljumper where you been?

Feet first into hell and back again!

When I die please bury me deep!

Place an MA5 down by my feet

Don't cry for me, don't shed no tear!..."

They trailed off into the distance, their voices echoing around the deserted streets, sounding oddly lonely, shouting against the darkness closing in. The tanks lumbered along, spreading out and moving in pairs down each street towards the enemy lines. Mingled among the military were black-suited ODSTs arranged in teams of four, each team walked over to the temporary command centre, which was in reality a glorified tent.

Haverson drummed his hands on the steering wheel, waiting for the group of Warthogs to pass the other way before they could pass them. "I wasn't expecting this much of a response, but we need to get around this traffic, and out of the city. Air extraction may be off limit for now, but we need to get to a safer location, before-"

Suddenly, all eyes turned skyward, and a ripple of panic spread throughout the congregation of soldiers. Haverson swore loudly and put his foot down, mounting the sidewalk to avoid the column of now frozen vehicles. Before she could turn her head to see what everyone else was staring at, he accelerated further, forcing her back.

"What's going on?" She asked.

He didn't answer her, but yelled at their gunner "Corporal, I need you to scan the skies, keep an eye on that mother fu-"

"Haverson!" She interrupted, grabbing his arm "What the hell is going on?"

"Take a look Doc!" He yelled back, not looking away from the road ahead, swerving violently to avoid an overturned garbage can.

She twisted her body around in the seat, leaning over to peer around the Corporal on the turret. At first she couldn't spot what everyone was so worked up about, all she noticed were a couple of banshee fliers at high altitude circling lazily high above the city., but as they sped down the street, the menacing shape of a covenant SDV-class heavy corvette slunk into view above a skyscraper.

"Shit." She muttered as the warship dropped low to just above the tallest buildings. Where were the AAA defences? Her question was answered a moment later when a dozen propellant trails snaked towards the alien invader, only to be shot down by the pulsating laser defences which sprung out from the ship's lateral batteries. Lances of light darted through the air and detonated the missiles' high explosive payload.

Of course, from this distance, all she could really see were twelve tiny puffs of smoke as the missiles were neutralised. The corvette proceeded to swoop through the air, banking hard towards the source of the aggression, its plasma batteries glowing a dull blue against its bright red hull. Teardrop shaped missiles of superheated plasma, now bright white, arced down from the ship and disappeared behind a building, although she shuddered to think what devastation they caused to the missile battery.

"Lieutenant! Banshees, 5 o'clock, fast and low!" The Corporal yelled over the noise of the engine and the roar of the wind. She watched, transfixed as the Marine swivelled the turret to face the three purple Banshee fighters heads straight for them over a municipal park area, their impulse drives' ghostly wails rising in volume as the neared.

The gunner thumbed the controls for the M41 and the triple-barrelled weapon spooled up quickly and began firing. The .50 calibre rounds spewed from the Gatling gun at an alarming rate, and once her earbuds had rapidly adjusted to the din, it sounded more like a million pieces of cloth being ripped at once than traditional gunfire. Bullet casings cascaded down into the turret bay and onto her shoulders.

She craned her neck to try and observe the effects of this devastating barrage of lead; initially the fliers seemed to shrug off the punishment, ducking and weaving to try and throw the Corporal's aim off, but after a few seconds the lead aircraft twitched and shuddered as the Armour Piercing rounds gutted it. Its engines sputtered and failed, and it fell from the sky, crashing onto the street behind them and detonating in a blue fireball.

"That's more like it Corporal! Give 'em hell!" Haverson whooped from the steering wheel as he jerked the hog to the left down a side street.

As he did so, the remaining two pursuant craft came within weapons range, and their twin plasma canons opened up, strafing the area around the Hog with blue bolts of superheated plasma. One bolt splashed across the hood of the vehicle, blistering and melting the titanium armour plating, sending a cloud of vaporised metal and composite over the M12, thankfully avoiding the soft flesh of its occupants.

Haverson began to swerve heavily from left to right, dodging the sprays of plasma and avoiding collisions with the abandoned cars and once they almost collided with the massive frame of one of the city's Elephant automated Garbage trucks. The ONI officer swore again and shifted up a gear, eliciting a crunching noise from the gearbox, which she assumed must have been damaged by the Banshee's fire.

"Shit shit shit." He cursed, barely audible over the din of the machine gun. "Corporal, I'm going to need those Banshees down sooner rather than later!"

There was no response, but the gun continued its chorus of brass and lead, the clinking of fallen shell casings sounding like metal rain.

"Corporal?!" Haverson yelled, and she turned around in her seat to try and tap his leg or something to grab his attention.

The Corporal was dead. He had evidently been hit by a plasma bolt, which had easily eaten away the layers of armour strapped to his chest and melted the flesh all the way through to bone and out the other side. In his last few moments he must have slumped forward onto the gun, because it was now pointed straight up, firing on full auto in the dead man's hands.

"Gunner's dead!" She yelled at Haverson, feeling sick to her stomach as she yanked hard at the body's leg, dragging the man's body off of the gun and over the side of the jeep. She didn't look at where he fell, but made a mental note to find out that Marine's name. Someone had to remember the sacrifice he'd made, so it might as well be her.

"God damn it, alright Doc, tell me where those bastards are." The Lieutenant ordered, gripping the steering wheel tightly and gritting his teeth.

She scanned the sky and quickly spotted the remaining Banshee; the other had evidently bugged out, but the last one had them in its sights, swooping down from on high. Oddly enough, it wasn't firing its plasma canons, and yet it was well within weapons range.

"It's at 6 o'clock, low, but it's not firing!" She reported, unholstering her M6D and pointing it squarely at the looming fighter.

"Wait, what? Oh, oh shit, hold onto something Doc, we're in for a world of hurt if I don't get us out of here!"

"What do you…?" She began to ask, but she was cut off by the appearance of a green glow emanating from the front of the Banshee.

The Fuel Rod canon discharged, and the massive bolt of radioactive energy sped towards them. Time slowed down, there was not a second to waste telling the Lieutenant, and she had to act. She whipped her body around to face forward and leaned over, forcibly jerking the steering wheel hard left just as the energy round hit the exact spot where the M12 would have been had she not acted.

The round detonated, scorching one side of her face with intense heat and throwing her bodily sideways in the vehicle, which itself was tipped onto its side and thrown across the road, hitting a couple of cars before coming to rest. During this episode her head was whipped around, bashing against the titanium skeleton divider between the driver and passenger's seats.

Her vision darkened as the now too familiar feeling of being knocked out flooded through her, her limbs going limp, all the muscles in her body relaxing as she lost consciousness. It was only thanks to this limpness that she wasn't injured more, but even still she felt a sickening pop as her shoulder dislocated and an equally nauseating crack as her elbow dislocated as well.

Fighting the pain and the impending blackness, she realised that the Hog had come to a stop and as she craned her neck around to check in on Haverson, she noted with a sigh of relief that he was relatively unhurt, but equally unconscious as she was soon to be. She coughed and immediately winced at the jolts of pain spasming through her.

There she lay for a couple of minutes, waiting for the inevitable dark, but before she could slip into sweet sleep, she felt gloved hands gently lift her out of the passenger seat and onto the pavement. She willed herself to open her eyes, her hearing now muted as blood pooled to the essential organs, and saw herself reflected in an angular silver/blue visor.

Her imagination conjured up fantasies of armoured knights as she slipped into unconsciousness, letting the darkness engulf her finally.

 **Chief Petty Officer Jacob-209, August 16** **th** **2552, 12:41 Zulu Time, MPD Head Quarter, City of Manassas**

"Hold up, contacts, dead ahead." Sara whispered over TEAMCOM, flashing her status light to amber. "I spot three, in the lobby, two IFF tags and a civilian Chatter transponder."

Sara, ever the eagle-eyed sniper, had opted to take the high ground for their rendezvous with Dr Martinez and was currently camped out on top of the residential block across the street looking through the scope of her rifle's thermal scope. He and Sabina were just off the street waiting for the all clear, crouched in the shadows of a back alley that ran alongside the Manassas Police Head Quarters.

"Copy that, any sign of Covenant activity?" He asked. It wasn't as if he didn't trust the Doctor, but if the Covenant were half as smart as them they could have figured out the code in Martinez' last transmission, and therefore could be waiting to pounce on not just a tier 1 ONI asset, but three Spartans, or as they called them, "Demons".

"Negative, closest Covvies I see are a few blocks away, we should be clear for now." Sara responded, and he knew through years of working closely beside her that she would instantly alert them if anything changed.

"Alright, let me know if anything changes, we're going in." He said, checking for the hundredth time to ensure his MA5C had a full magazine and the safety was off. He turned his head to look at Sabina, who nodded almost imperceptibly.

He stretched his legs and stood to his full height, keeping his rifle levelled but not aimed at anything in particular, and walked slowly down the dank and decrepit alleyway and out onto the street. As they approached the revolving doors to the Manassas Police Department HQ he activated his IFF tag, which would hopefully warn the others of the Spartans' arrival and prevent them from shooting on sight. Through the glass frontage of the building he could clearly see the three people standing in a loose triangle, apparently deep in conversation in the middle of the marbled lobby.

When the two Spartans started using the automatic revolving doors, one of the figures, a heavily armoured Orbital Drop Shock Trooper, turned around quickly, aiming their M7S SMG squarely at the pair. The other two were slower to react, and Jake took note of the shorter soldier's inexperience with the sidearm they raised, fumbling with the holster for a brief moment before half raising the M6 model pistol. The third man didn't even try to draw his weapon, just turned his head slightly at the two Spartans.

The ODST quickly lowered the weapon, and the un-helmeted man in black armour waved them over. As they walked quickly over, his expert eyes took in details about the trio; the middle figure, who he surmised must be the Doctor, had her left arm in a sling, and seemed ill at ease in the ONI issue BDU, the un-helmeted man on the left, whose IFF tag identified him as one Lieutenant Elias Haverson, carried with him the air of an ONI spook, ice cool and relaxed. The ODST's tag named him as Lance Corporal Adam Kovic, and appeared as any of the Helljumpers did behind the silver-reflective visor, impossible to read. He suddenly felt sympathy for other members of the forces when they met Spartans in the field, if this ODST was an enigma to him, he couldn't imagine how unnerving his demeanour could be.

"Spartans" Haverson greeted, initiating the exchange of salutes. "Still in one piece after your little demolition experience?"

"Yes sir, all present and accounted for." He turned to the ONI attaché and nodded in greeting. "Ma'am, Admiral Walker sends his regards."

She snorted "No doubt, what's the plan?" She looked up at him expectantly, holstering her weapon and adjusting her sling slightly.

"Jake, we got Covenant patrols inbound, ETA 4 minutes, we've got to get out of here or take them out." Sara's voice came over his comms, and Sabina's acknowledgement light flashed green in response. He activated his own light and looked down at the Asset.

"There's a covenant patrol incoming, we're leaving, now." He looked up at the two men either side of her. "Afraid we'll have to skip the pleasantries gentlemen, I've been given Operational Command of any and all UNSC forces within the city limits by the Admiral, just so we're clear."

The ODST and the Spook nodded in unison, the former shouldering his M7S silenced SMG and the latter checking the slide of his sidearm as Jake led the group towards the revolving doors to get back out onto the street. Sabina took up the rear guard, her M90 readied, the only external sign of her alertness, but behind the mirrored visor he knew that she would be constantly scanning rooftops, shadowy alleyways and supposedly empty buildings, all while keeping her eye on the plethora of sensors splashed across her HUD. The end result of this hyper-alertness was that even if so much as a rat two blocks away moved from one room to another, Sabina would know in an instant.

"Your meta data accompanying your transmission earlier indicated a three-man fire-team, don't tell me one of you got lost?" Salvia quipped as they moved through the revolving doors one at a time, stepping through slightly awkwardly so as to protect her injured shoulder.

He furrowed his brow, turning around and looking at the surprisingly resourceful civilian "How did you access encrypted UNSC meta-data?" No one, save for trained and authorised military intelligence technicians, could normally access the encoded information.

She smiled crookedly, evidently happy to know something the Spartan didn't. "I have my ways, helpful in a situation like this, wouldn't you agree?"

He grunted. He'd done enough civilian rescue operations to know her angle; she wanted to prove herself useful to the group, not just dead weight. A similar situation had occurred in a rescue op on Jericho VII, some gun club nut who wasn't as good a shot as he thought he was, almost got them all killed on numerous occasions. In this case however, listening in to communications could prove to be very useful.

"In answer to your question, Doctor, Spartans don't get lost."

The pavement next to the Doctor cracked as Sara jumped out of the third storey window and landed about two metres away from the surprised civvie. Sara straightened up, wielding her M7, her Sniper Rifle firmly attached to her back, and walked lazily over towards a shocked Martinez.

Kovic lowered his own weapon, having instinctively pointed it at the potential threat, and shook his head. "You Spartans always gotta make an entrance, huh?"

"Says the guy who literally drops from space into battle?" Sara retorted "Yeah, real subtle"

Kovic shrugged "Point taken"

Jake added the two military communicators and the civilian Chatter device onto the TEAMCOM network. "Try not to use the radios, we've already seen that too much use attracts all sorts of trouble."

The others nodded, and Sara stepped forward, jerking her thumb backwards down the abandoned street. "Covenant patrol, 5 Elites, 6 times that many Grunts, plus they've got Skirmishers on overwatch, about a click East, moving towards us."

"Skirmishers are trouble." Jake muttered, waving for the group to follow him as he started jogging down the street in the opposite direction, which they did, Sabina falling into place at the back of them, Sara moving alongside him at the front.

"Sorry, what exactly are Skirmishers for those of us who haven't had a whole lifetime of shooting them in the face?" gasped Salvia in between winces; her shoulder was making it hard for her to keep up with them.

"A sub species of Jackal, feathered, about twice as large and twice as aggressive. Hard to hit, they're agile to boot." Kovic informed her.

"Great" She said, voice dripping with sarcasm as the group turned a corner onto a narrow apartment-lined street. "Where the hell are we going?"

"Nakatomi Plaza, friendly forces" Sara stated brusquely

"We've been in contact with some guys at Nakatomi Plaza." Haverson piped up "There were about 20 of them when we last spoke, they were going to send a team to come get us, but then we figured out that the covenant was using long-range radio broadcasts to hone in on us, so we told them to stay put and cut off all comms, that was about 4 hours ago."

They lapsed into silence for the next couple of hours, darting down streets, alleys and avenues, keeping to the shadows cast by the mid-evening sun and avoiding dozens of Covenant Patrols scouring the streets for them. And although they couldn't take the direct route due to the surveillance and patrolling enemies, their meandering path headed in the general direction of the residential Nakatomi Plaza. As they moved onwards, the buildings surrounding them changed from the low-rise office buildings, banks and shops of the district from which they had come to taller residential buildings, made to resemble old Earth city apartment blocks, with ornate staircases leading off of the sidewalk up to the main front doors. The restaurants they had previously passed now were cafes and fast food places, catering to the needs of the middle and lower classes.

All the while, the haunting figure of the Covenant Corvette hung above the skyscrapers of the business district across the river, slowly prowling around the area, accompanied by a swarm of phantoms and spirits as a shark is followed by remoras. The sight deeply disturbed him, he wasn't used to being this close to an enemy ship and not taking some course of action against it. Normally the ship would be the highest priority target, not some civilian smartass with a broken arm.

As the bright disc of Epsilon Eridani sunk low in the sky, they were a mere four city blocks away from their destination, and could see the towering apartment block rising at least three times as tall as its neighbours, the bright red logo of the Nakatomi Corporation emblazoned on the side. Apparently, according to Haverson, who insisted on filling the silence with useless trivia, the building was intended to house workers employed by the Corporation, but had laid empty for a decade when the company went bust.

"Sara, try hailing them with the short-wave." He said from his position behind a moving van. The group had spread out slightly as they got more comfortable with movement, reducing the effect of potential aggression as well. Right now, Martinez, Haverson and Sabina were crouched in the shadow of a city bus 15 metres behind him, Sara was on the other side of the street taking cover behind a scooter, and Kovic was with him, pressed up against the rear of a truck, sneaking peeks out to check rooftops occasionally.

A few seconds passed, then Sara said "Nothing, just static."

"Figures" He mumbled, then signalled the group to move forward, darting from cover to cover.

"How do we know that they're even still alive?" Haverson asked from the back, sounding like he didn't want to believe it.

"We don't" Sabina responded. It was the first time the Spartan had spoken since the rendezvous at the Police Head Quarters, and she was doing a remarkably good job of sounding as sinister as possible. He couldn't tell if she was uneasy with their new colleagues, or she was just messing around with them.

"That's… cheerful" Kovic muttered.

"Inbound! Flight of Phantoms, count three birds in the air, heading towards the Plaza!" Sara called out, and sure enough, three pearlescent purple teardrops swooped towards them from the Business District, the faint whine of their impulse drives loudening.

Jake swung his view over and upwards towards the upper floors of the Plaza, expecting some sort of defensive fire; nothing came, ore evidence that the defenders had been wiped out. Something didn't add up though; if the Covenant knew that there were UNSC forces in the area, why didn't the corvette just vaporise the whole building with its pulse lasers?

His answer was immediate and brutal; from the roof of the building, hidden beyond the lip of the edge, came trails of fire and thick smoke as 6 projectiles arced through the air, covering the roughly 2 kilometre gap between the launcher and the incoming Phantoms in three seconds. The Covenant dropships didn't stand a chance, despite their last-second evasive manoeuvres, the missiles detonated in fiery blue blossoms of light, ripping the curved hulls of the alien dropships apart and sending them tumbling down to the ground, spewing pale blue smoke and bright blue plasma coolant. The three former dropships careened into a public park a click away, throwing up a terrific pulse of blue-tinged smoke into the air. The conflict was over so quickly that the sound of the engagement only reached them a couple of seconds afterwards, the whoosh of the launch and booms of their deadly payloads' explosions echoing around the deserted cityscape.

They all looked around, dumbfounded for a few seconds, and then Sara whispered "Well, I guess they're still home."

"Fireteam Resistance to Sierra two-zero-niner, we see you down there, couldn't let the covvies know we were here before we took them down" Came a heavily Hungarian accented female voice over the short-wave, sounding exhausted "But I think the time for subtlety is over, we'll cover you with snipers until you can get to the Plaza, over."

"Copy that Fireteam Resistance, we'll be with you shortly." Jake acknowledged, shaking his head before switching to TEAMCOM "Crazy bastards"

"I know that voice…" Kovic began to say, but he was cut off by the same female voice over the radio, with a sudden spike of urgency in her tones;

"Sierra 209, enemy air units inbound on your position, they must be tracking the short-wave radio now! Triple-A emplacement is reloading, we can't cover you! They must've known where you are and sent the Phantoms to draw our fire!"

"Sara?" He barked, his heart suddenly racing "Where are they?"

"I have no idea, they must be flying underneath the skyline, and my long-range sensors aren't picking them up!" She sounded panicked, and that scared him more than anything else.

"Okay, everybody get into the buildings, we need to take cover!" Jake ordered, dragging Kovic out of cover and sprinting to the nearest structure, a grocery store with smashed in windows next to them. He glanced around at the Doctor, happy to see Sabina pulling her and Haverson towards the building on the other side of the street, an elementary school.

"Too late, Lich!" Sara's voice came over the comms, and suddenly the looming form of a Lich-class heavy assault craft thundered into view, skidding to a halt above the street a block down, the purple scintillating light of the gravity lift springing into life below it. The plasma turrets at the bow of the hulking aircraft opened up, splashing white hot ionised liquid over the streets, forcing them into cover.

"Get into cover now!" He ordered, practically throwing Kovic into the store and turning to fire on the file of covenant troops being deployed, most by the gravity lift, but some simply jumped out of the Lich's open troop bay, using jet packs to slow their fall. Grunts, Elites and Jackals sprang into action, firing bolts of energy, plasma and needle fire at them. Most of the enemy combatants took cover behind human vehicles, and as the adrenaline kicked in, Jake took half a second to make sense of the chaos let loose in the last three seconds.

About 100 metres away down the street, the bulk of the enemy were camped behind cars, firing increasingly accurately at the divided group; he and Kovic were on the South side of the street, the Marine struggling to get to his feet within the grocery store, preparing to take a firing position in the window. He was crouched outside the store's window, looking across the street to Haverson, Sabina and the Doc; they were pinned down by the bulk of the enemy fire, stuck behind a newsstand that wasn't going to take many more plasma shots before it melted completely. Sabina was forcing Martinez as low as possible, and had swapped to her MA5B to lay down what suppressive fire she could against the onslaught. Haverson was, to his credit, also squeezing off a few rounds with his M6G towards the enemy. He was wondering where Sara has disappeared to, but the sharp crack of a Sniper rifle from his 5 o'clock and the wet thwack and accompanying scream from the enemy lines answered that question.

His objective became clear; lay down suppressive fire so that Martinez's lot could escape into the school on the North side of the street. He turned to Kovic and yelled "Suppressive fire!", then swivelled on the spot, raised his assault rifle and let rip. The familiar feeling of recoil calmed him down, and he coolly took down target after target, swapping magazines with a polished efficiency. The suppressed staccato of the ODST's M7S added to the din, and the steady crack of the Sara's sniper acted at the drumbeat to this cacophony of war.

Jake spotted several enemies go down without their direct intervention, and the echoing shots of several other sniper rifles confirmed his suspicions that Fireteam Resistance had added their firepower to the engagement.

"Sabina, how's it looking over there?" He asked while slotting his third magazine into place, pulling back the charging handle to cycle the first round into the chamber. "Can you move the asset?"

"Negative, fire's too heavy, popping smoke!" She said, and he saw out of the corner of his eye the swinging motion of her arm as she tossed a smoke grenade perfectly into place midway between them and their attackers, right in the middle of the street.

He tried to move over to her, but heavy plasma fire cut through the billowing smoke, indicating that the Lich must have been equipped with some kind of thermal optics, and he was forced to stay in cover behind the mutilated and melted sports car.

"We're moving!" Sabina called out, and through the thin trails of smoke sneaking up the street, he saw the figure of the Spartan, the spook and the Doc duck into the relative safety of the school.

"Doc's clear" Sara announced "We need to move, rendezvous at Nakatomi Plaza, it'll be easier if we split up, force the covenant to divide their resources."

"Copy that" He said, throwing a couple of M9 fragmentation grenades to discourage further advances by the aliens. Random plasma and needle fire was still emerging from the smoke, and Jake vaulted over the low window sill into the store beside Kovic, moving away from the street further into the store.

"I'll see you at the RV point." Sara said, and Sabina's acknowledgement light turned green to confirm. He activated his, and then turned from the frozen produce aisle towards the back of the shop.

"So then" Kovic said, reloading his SMG "The Spartan and the Helljumper, story writes itself"

They advanced through the empty building, past the surprisingly un-looted shelves of breakfast cereal, frozen Moa steaks and baby formula. They snuck through the employees' only door into the warehouse at the back of the shop, and made their way towards the loading bay at the very back of the room. According to map data downloaded from the city's SUPERINTENDANT class AI, the loading bay led into a backstreet, from which they would have to pass through four more buildings to reach the relative safety of Nakatomi Plaza.

It was as they were moving past the floor-to-ceiling crates of consumer electronics that Jake first felt something was wrong; a momentary flash on his motion sensor, and the feeling that they were being hunted crept up on him. He held up his fist in a non-verbal gesture to halt, and scanned the darkened room; nothing moved, no sounds echoed in from the outside world, no humming of power generators, nothing.

Then, a scuffing noise, barely audible to the human ear, but easily picked up by his helmet's sensitive microphones and his acute hearing. A knot of dread tightened in his stomach, and he turned the flashlights on his rifle and helmet off, motioning for the ODST to do the same.

"What's wrong?" Kovic whispered

"Get ready for a fight" He responded, gulping "We're not alone"

 **Dr Salvia Martinez, city of Manassas, Reach, 20:07, 15** **th** **August 2552, (17 Hours before Spartan deployment)**

For the second time that day, Salvia Martinez regained consciousness, wincing as the sharp pain in her shoulder intensified. She looked around blearily, taking in her surroundings and clutching her arm; she'd felt the limb pop out of socket, but her range of motion indicated that it had been repositioned, albeit rather roughly. She probed the area with her fingers, gritting her teeth. Her arm wold be fine, but she couldn't move it very much without excruciating pain.

She was sitting in what looked to be an abandoned restaurant, the black and white chequered tiling cool beneath her, and all the tables and furniture had been pushed up against each of the four walls. There was no one around, so she got unsteadily to her feet, suppressing the fresh bolts of pain from her various injuries. She hobbled over to the nearest table and ripped the tablecloth from it, using her vague knowledge on a health & safety course taken two years ago to fashion a makeshift sling out of the fabric, tightening the knot with her teeth.

She moved towards the door to the street, wanting to find the others, but before she could make it halfway across the room, a husky voice growled from far behind her, and she froze instinctively.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you" The voice warned, and she turned around on the spot to face the source, a heavily armoured Orbital Drop Shock Trooper, his matte-black armour almost melding his form with the shadows at the far back of the restaurant. "Don't take another step towards that door, that is, if you like your legs intact."

"What are you talking about?" She whispered, hairs on the back of her neck standing up in protest.

"There's a claymore mine set up under one of them tables, business end's pointin' right at the doorway." The man's Texan drawl added an off putting laid-back note to his proclamations of death, and he walked slowly forward, cradling a rifle in his hands. "That wake you up somethin' fierce?"

She nodded

"Good, then come with me, quick as you can" He said gruffly, turning and disappearing into the shadows of the restaurant's kitchens. She followed him hesitantly, through the room and through a rear door into an emergency stairwell, ascending a dozen or more flights of stairs while the lights above them flickered in correspondence to the sound of distant explosions. As they ascended, a much closer noise drifted into focus, the steady and relentless cracking of a sniper's rifle.

"This way" The ODST grunted, barging his way through the door on the 14th floor and into a corridor. She followed him into one of the apartments, whose outer wall had been hit by some sort of projectile, which had torn a jagged 4 foot hole in the wall starting at floor level. The wind whistled outside and she could see the streets far below through the hole. In front of this hole was a pair of ODSTs, both lying prone facing the open air, one clutching a set of tripod-mounted binoculars to his face, the other seemingly wrapped around the sleek form of a SRS-99 Sniper Rifle. As they walked past them, she heard the spotter calling out targets;

"Elite hiding behind a tanker, 1.2 kilometres distant, wind speed 12, mark"

"Mark" The sniper responded, and fired. She was very thankful for her reactive ear plugs, because the rifle's deafening rapport was a little more than a cough to her protected ears.

"You got 'em, target down, Jackal sharpshooter, in cover behind the mailbox, 1.3…." the spotter continued, trailing off as they got further away towards the kitchen of the apartment.

"… if we cut across the municipal park towards the university, could we get through to the evac zones" She heard Haverson's voice, strained and tired.

"No way, enemy snipers in these buildings here and here would spot us for sure, we'd be right in their killzone, we've already lost three men in that area." A calm voice responded, almost drowned out by the continuous tinny voices coming through a radio set.

"Castle comin' in" Castle announced before pushing the kitchen door open and leading her through; the small room had been overtaken by military personnel, all of whom were occupied with hastily set up control stations, computers mounted on folding chairs around the edge of the room, most of them were talking on headsets hurriedly, directing units and co-ordinating movements and support, fluidly dragging icons around their screens.

In the centre of this organised chaos was a low dining table, bereft of eating implements or place settings, being replace by a large holographic representation of the city's downtown area, with red and blue markers denoting enemy and friendly units in real time. Around this table, three men stood, gesturing towards various points of the map, talking in low voices. She immediately recognised the familiar face of Haverson, highlighting an open area to the south-west of them, the other two were a mystery, one was wearing the imposing body armour of an ODST and bore the rank of Sergeant on his lapel, the other was dressed in digital camouflage fatigues, a mixture of greys and whites in square patterns, much like the rest of the support staff in the room.

"Doctor, good to see you in one piece, this is Captain Brody of the 13th Infantry Division, Intelligence Corps" Haverson was quick on the introductions, first pointing at the spectacled soldier wearing fatigues, before waving his hand towards the ODST, who stood cross-armed and resolute. "And this is Sergeant Jackson, 405th ODST. Come join us."

She moved over to them, taking care not to trip over the maze of wires and cabling snaking around on the floor. "Please tell me there's an evacuation plan, because I'm getting pretty sick of getting knocked out today."

The ODST snorted behind his visor, and Haverson smirked slightly "We've been discussing that problem for the last two hours while you were out, and, well, how did you put it Jackson?"

"The only way you're getting out of this city is behind a god-damnded Spartan, or in a bodybag." He grunted. "Snipers to the south, enemy advancing from the North, and any air evac is out of the question."

She frowned, feeling like she was missing something "And why not?"

Haverson sighed "Because about 30 minutes after we had that run-in with the Banshee, a Covenant Corvette swooped in, go have a look outside."

Her heart fell, and it was with an awful sense of dread that she approached the window to her left, peering through the slightly opaque glass at the view of the financial district; there it was, the hulking silhouette of a SDV heavy corvette, not a major threat to most UNSC ships, but deadly to any ground forces in the city.

"Thing took out most of our Triple-A batteries before it got within a mile of the city limits, only thing we've got left is a unit out in the sticks, Nakatomi Plaza, but they're reporting heavy assaults by ground forces, so they're not going to last long." The Army Captain informed. "Right now, the Army's focussed on evacuation of UNSC assets before this city becomes another lake of glass. Last evac transport leaves at 27:00 from the Miriam Trust branch in the Old Town, get there and you have a chance."

The Captain highlighted the area on the map, and Haverson nodded curtly. "Thank you Captain, now that we're all mobile, we'll be out of your hair." The ONI officer saluted smartly, as did the ODST, and they led her out of the kitchen and back into the sniper's nest.

"Kovic, Edwards, get your gear, we're moving out." Jackson barked, and the soldiers rapidly disassembled their rifle and stowed it in a bag, following them closely as they left the Observation Post and descended to street level.

"Stick with me ma'am" Kovic said "We'll get you off planet, no problem."

"Where are we going?" She asked, already slightly out of breath as they high-tailed it down the stairs.

"Miriam Trust building downtown. It's the only evacuation centre that hasn't been hit yet, you two might have to ride along with some walking wounded, but it'll take you out of the city to FOB Willow, the Navy'll take it from there." Kovic responded.

"Outstanding" she muttered sarcastically as they thundered downwards. "I overheard talk of snipers covering the park?"

The ODST nodded "That's right, squad of Jackals with Beam Rifles, those things'll tear right through you. Luckily for you you're tagging along with two of the best snipers in the 405th. I give those Jackals 4-1 odds of not even finding out where we killed them from."

"Cut the chatter" Jackson barked, barging open an emergency exit at street level, swinging his rifle up and around to cover potential threats on the other side. The other ODSTs followed, and she heard the metallic clicking as they switched their respective safeties off, barely audible to her over her own pounding heartbeat.

"I'll stay with the Doctor and Corporal Kovic" Haverson announced, lagging behind the three other ODSTs, clutching his pistol tightly.

"Copy that, move up to the next intersection, keep a low profile, we don't want to draw any unwanted attention." Jackson said, his voice slipping into a neutral tone of a seasoned soldier.

They proceeded down the street, moving from car to car, minimising any time spent out in the open to minimise the chance of being spotted by any one of the dozen or so aerial patrols that she observed; smooth insect-shaped Covenant Phantoms circling lazily far above them. Her shoulder hurt with every step she took, but she gritted her teeth and powered through it, darting around the deserted streets like an animal avoiding a hunter. She felt as if there were eyes constantly watching her, some gut reaction screaming at her that they were being watched.

Ahead, Jackson held up a closed fist, then made a complex series of hand motions that the other ODSTs seemed to have no trouble understanding, as both Castle and Edwards slipped out of cover and into a nearby hospital building.

"What's going on" She whispered to Haverson

"They're moving into a better firing position to see and eliminate those Jackals." He replied, pointing ahead of them "You see the trees?"

She followed his finger and squinted, barely discerning the thin sliver of green amongst the shades of grey and mirrored glass. "I see it"

"Only way through to Miriam without running into a roadblock, and the bastards have got it covered. Hopefully that won't last too long though"

They waited in the almost silence, broken only by the creaks of their armour as they shifted on the spot, until a single burst of static cut through their comms, followed by a reciprocal burst. Within seconds, the air was filled with the meaty echoes of large-calibre rifle fire, maybe five or six shots in rapid succession. Then silence.

"All clear boss man" Castle's southern drawl came over the comms. "That's a squad of Jackal snipers missin' their brains."

"Good work, now pack up and get down here." Jackson spoke, shifting uneasily.

"Roger that, we're on our way- enemy Phantom inbound!" Castle's tone jumped to urgency as she saw one of the circling dropships swoop down onto the roof of the hospital and out of sight.

"Get out of there!" Jackson yelled, breaking cover and moving quickly towards the entrance, his boots pounding on the asphalt .

"Negative, they're in the stairwell" Edwards shouted, and the sound of heavy small arms fire started up from above them. She craned her head upwards, and spotted one of the windows in the hospital blow out, sending shimmering shards of broken glass raining down on them and accompanied by a high-pitched whining explosion.

"Plasmas, Edwards, you alright?" Castle asked, his voice barely audible over the racket in the background of automatic fire.

"I-I'm hit" the other ODST responded, sounding dazed.

"God damn it, hold on, we're coming" Jackson said, kicking in the door, before Haverson's steely tones cut through the comms.

"Negative Sergeant, we need to move out."

Jackson turned around "What?"

"We need to protect the asset. The snipers are down, we move for the extraction point now."

"Like hell we do, I'm not leaving them to die" Jackson screamed

"Get the fuck out of here boss, we'll hold 'em off, looks like an Elite Ultra, didn't get a good look, but he had some crazy armour." Castle reported. "Come get some you filthy alien shit-heads!"

"Fuck, fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!" Jackson exclaimed, kicking an abandoned briefcase with enough force to rip it open, scattering the contents around them.

"I'm sorry Sergeant, but we need to move." Haverson ordered.

The ODST took a second to compose himself, then straightened up and marched onward towards the park without saying a word.

"Come on Doc, we're not waiting around for those Covenant to find us." Haverson said softly, his face etched with yet more suppressed grief.

"The most important thing now is getting to the extraction point, we're not letting them die for nothing."

They moved onwards away from the building, and she only looked back for a brief second and with a heavy burden on her shoulders as the gunfire stopped.

 **Special Operations Officer Sefa 'Rodumee**

As he turned over the body of the second human soldier, he marvelled again at how much like insects they looked, with hard black outer shells and soft, squishy internals. For humans, these two had put up a spirited defence of their position. He counted 12 dead Unggoy and two of his best Lieutenants sprawled across the floor, their blood leaving a sickly scent in the air.

"Commander, the human scientist is not here." One of his warriors told him, growling discontentedly at the prospect that their prize had slipped out of their grasp.

"Such a waste of fine Sangheili blood" He mused, leaning down to each of his fallen brothers and uttering the traditional mourning rite.

" _A Warrior from birth, a Warrior in death._

 _May the light of the Great Journey guide your passage into the beyond._

 _And may honour be kept among your Clan until the end of times"_

His brothers joined him, but as soon as the prayer was finished, he was back focussed on the task set to him by the noble Hierarch.

"Send their bodies back to their homes for proper burials, leave the Unggoy." He barked, striding over towards the shattered window and looking out over the city. The Urban sprawl reminded him of his home Keep, and he quickly suppressed the pangs of homesickness that welled up from inside.

"As you command" the warrior confirmed, leading a trio of Sangheili in carefully removing the fallen, barging past the cluster of Unggoy that had congregated in the centre of the large room, playing some childish game that Sefa did not understand.

"What are your orders sir?" His second-in-command asked, jaws flared wide in disgust that Sangheili blood had been spilled by the infidels.

"The humans protecting our prize will have scattered like rats by now, fleeing as cowards do." He growled "They will attempt to leave the city. We must not allow this. Where is the nearest concentrated human presence?"

"A financial institution about three kilometres away" he replied "Many Unggoy and Kig-Yar units have fallen trying to assault their position."

He narrowed his eyes, snorting amusedly. "Warriors, return to the ship, let us see how the humans fare against Sangheili blades!"

There was a roar of assent from his Sangheili, and they turned to walk back up the stairs to the roof. He stopped in the doorway and looked down at the mutilated corpse of one of the human soldiers. Next time, there would be no Sangheili blood shed.

 **Salvia Martinez, Miriam Trust building, 22:58 (14 hours before Spartan deployment), Reach**

"We need to get out of here. Now." Haverson muttered weakly after he had finished throwing up, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve.

"I…" She muttered, looking around her, not quite taking it in; the evacuation zone was gone. Utterly destroyed, sandbags split and burst, plasma scoring everywhere, the floor awash with a mixture of dried and semi-congealed blood, the thin coating only broken by the countless spent shell casings littering the ocean of blood. Stretchers were upended, broken and thrown aside like toys.

Then there were the bodies. Dozens of them, some intact, others barely recognisable, ripped apart and strewn around. As their group slowly stumbled around the square in a daze, she noticed some of the bodies were left in the spots where they'd died, one Marine was slumped over a mounted machine gun, two men in military fatigues she found shielding a wounded comrade, all three of them still and ashen.

The air was thick with smoke, billowing out of the flaming wreckage of a pelican dropship, the bright red cross painted on its side peeling as it was licked by flame. The stench of death was in the air too, the sickly sweet aroma of spilt blood mixed with the bitter taste of cordite and tang of discharged plasma weaponry.

"Hey, listen up, this location is blown, we're out of here. Grab any ammo you can find, these guys won't need theirs." Haverson ordered, patting down one of the fallen with a disgusted look on his face.

She turned from him, feeling like she might throw up herself, and hear the sounds of scuffling echoing around the tall buildings around them, coupled with pained grunts and swearing. She whipped her head round and saw Jackson punch Haverson cleanly in the jaw, a wild look in his eyes as the two men went down swinging at each other.

"jesus fuckin' Christ, what the fuck's wrong with you sarge!?" Kovic yelled as he waded in and dragged the ODST off of the ONI officer.

"Show some fucking respect!" Jackson bellowed, straining to get free and throw another punch "You cold-hearted ONI fuck! These men aren't even cold yet and you want to strip them bare like a god-damned vulture!"

Haverson wiped a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth, getting to his feet and spreading his arms. "You want to take another swing at me? Do it. I won't stop you. Take a couple more for free. But that doesn't change the fact that if we stay here, we die. You think I want to do this? I hate doing this, I hate myself for doing this, but we don't have the luxury of a choice right now, we have to get out of here and survive, and our only option is to collect as much ammunition here and get the fuck out of here." He looked defeated, but she could see in his eyes there was a hint of steely determination underneath it all.

Jackson slumped slightly, then brushed Kovic off of him and walked away from the lieutenant, kicking a discarded helmet in anger.

Haverson went back to the dead Marine, relieving him of his rifle and ammunition before moving over to her, pale and dejected. "How you holding up Doc?"

She shrugged weakly "I don't know. I should be in shock right now, but I'm having a hard time accepting this is real."

"You get that." He said, ratcheting the bolt on his newly acquired weapon habitually. "Some get angry like the Sergeant, some go numb like you, and some, who've seen it all before worse, just move on and try not to think about it too much. It never leaves you though."

She nodded "I can guess which one you fall in to."

He grimaced "Let's get moving, covenant could be watching."

"Yes sir" Kovic said from the wreckage of a Warthog, jogging over alongside Jackson, who didn't say a word behind the visor.

"Where are we going?" She asked

"Anywhere but here" Haverson replied, consulting his map of the city on his data pad. "The Intelligence Officer said that Nakatomi plaza still has AAA emplacements, that's our best shot to get you off-world, so that's where we'll go."

"I'll be glad to see the last of this place." She said, shuddering.

"You and I both, let's move out." Haverson said, shouldering his weapon and walking briskly to the north out of the square. "I'll take point, Kovic, stay with the Doc, Jackson, cover the rear."

She fell into step with the ODST, their footfalls echoing around the skyscrapers and abandoned cars. Maybe it was something to do with the overwhelming dose of death she'd just been subjected to, but she couldn't help seeing moments of life frozen in the quiet chaos around her; the half-smoked cigarette dropped onto the pavement next to the shattered screen of an expensive Chatter device portraying the life of a financier wearing a grey suit, the filthy bedroll alongside a bottle of cheap whiskey in an alcove telling the sad tale of a homeless man down on his luck. She didn't know if these stories were true, or even close to reality, but she hoped they were.

Somewhere in this ghost of a city, she could still feel the echoes of normal life. So much had changed in such a short period of time for her, that life felt far behind her, a distant memory of normality. But even then, they had still been at war with the Covenant. They had burned hundreds of human colonies, eradicating billions. A very cynical part of her appreciated how effective the UNSC's censors were at playing down the dire situation that humanity was in.

"So what does an ONI attaché do exactly?" Kovic broke the ponderous silence that had descended on them, speaking in low tones so as not to include the Lieutenant or Sergeant in their discussion.

"If I told you I'd have to kill you." She responded, half-smiling at the cliché-ness of her rehearsed reply.

"Naturally." He nodded "But seeing as we are both likely to die in the next 12 hours, I was just wondering what the pay is like, I'm thinking of diversifying my portfolio"

"Less than you'd think, more than it needs to be." She shrugged "I'm not in it for the money."

"Then what are you in it for? What's driving you Doc?"

She didn't answer for a long while "I'm trying to make a difference. Isn't that what we all want? Why you signed up?"

He sighed "I signed up for the marines because I got into some trouble with the law. My choices were either carry on down my path and end up dead or in jail, or join up for the only business in town that would accept someone with my record; the Maine Corps."

"What kind of trouble, if you don't mind me asking?" She timidly posed, suddenly fascinated with this man who had up until now just been muscle in a suit of armour.

"Nothing major, but enough to limit my job options. Then my brother got sick, degenerative Gladstone's disease." He sighed "My brother, he's the golden boy, smarter than Shaw, got a scholarship to Sydney, but couldn't afford his treatments on his own salary. Me signing up for the marines was the only option, and not one I enjoyed being forced to choose."

"I'm sorry." She herself had graduated from Sydney Educational Institute a decade ago, and knew that to get in you needed to pass the battery of enrolment exams and tests. "Where is he now?"

"Truth told Doc, I have no idea. Haven't spoken to him in years. But I worked hard in the marines, worked my way into ODST, and I don't regret a thing." He tilted his visor towards her, gesturing to her with his gloved hand. "I put him before me then, just like I'm putting you before me now. All of us are."

"But I'm just an engineer, a dozen people would fill my position within hours if I don't make it out of here." She protested, feeling uneasy about having her life valued above someone else's.

"That's not for me to say. I just know that if ONI…" He nodded towards Haverson "… goes to this much trouble to get you out of here, you're worth something to them."

She slipped back into silence as they marched through the gridded streets towards the residential suburbs.

"Keep walking Doc." Kovic whispered, his voice suddenly on edge. "Don't look around, don't tense up, just keep walking."

"What's going on?" She whispered back, never more conscious of her body's pose and movements.

"We're being followed." He responded. "Sarge, give the signal."

"On three." Jackson's gravelly voice broke through on the comms.

"RUN" Kovic yelled, forcefully pushing her ahead of him as she broke out into an undignified sprint. She looked back at their pursuant, and saw both Jackson and Kovic swinging around to face an empty street.

"Doc, get to me!" Haverson yelled, adopting a firing stance and aiming squarely behind her.

"Come out you dog-breathed piece of shit!" Jackson yelled, swinging his rifle back and forth.

"What they hell are they yelling about?" She panted as she drew up to the Lieutenant. "I don't see anything?"

"Lieutenant, move!" Jackson yelled over his shoulder. "We'll flush him out at catch up to you!"

Haverson didn't have time to respond before the Sergeant was dead. As if puppeted by an invisible hand, Jackson was bodily lifted off of the ground by his torso into the air. The only things which disputed the supernatural effect she observed was the chilling scream of agony escaping the ODST's lips and the twin blades of plasma protruding from his spine, just under his chest.

"Go!" Jackson wailed, and she watched, transfixed by horror as he dropped his weapon and fumbled with his bandolier, pulling the pin on a frag grenade and punching it into the open jaws of the Elite that had speared him with an energy sword, which was now visible as the active camouflage de-shrouded from around it.

"Contact!" Kovic yelled as he dove to the side away from Jackson, rolled into a firing stance and opened fire on one of the three Elites rapidly becoming visible right behind them. Haverson opened up as well, causing the shields of the rear elite to spark and shimmer.

Plasma fire splashed over the road around them, and Haverson pushed her out of the way of a bolt of blue death, and she sprawled out on the ground, wincing as her shoulder flared with pain. She looked up in time to see the grenade detonate, evaporating the Elite and the Sergeant in milliseconds as the Elite's plasma grenades were set off in a chain reaction. She briefly saw Kovic thrown bodily towards them by the blast, and Haverson come skidding to a halt about 4 metres away from her.

She coughed and spluttered, shaking the stars from her eyes as she tried to get her bearings and stop her ears from ringing. Her gaze was drawn to the bright white electrifying blade moving slowly towards the Lieutenant. Her vision cleared slightly to reveal that one Elite had survived the blast, trailing a large line of rich purple blood towards them, limping heavily.

"Haver…" She tried to say, but the smoke caught her throat and sent her into a coughing fit. The Lieutenant stirred slightly, coughing weakly.

The Sangheili warrior drew closer, and as he did so she could see by his exuberant armour colourations and variants that he was no ordinary soldier. He loomed over Haverson, growling loudly, and the Lieutenant began scrabbling for his rifle, which was nowhere in sight. The Elite yelled something in his own language and raised his sword arm to strike, starting to deliver what she was sure was a very damning and righteous speech in his own language.

Her pistol. As if in a dream, she fumbled with the holster on her waist, awkwardly rolling off of it to allow her to remove the bulky sidearm. She shakily flipped off the safety and took aim.

She didn't really aim. She just pointed the barrel vaguely at the alien's head and pulled the trigger. The unfamiliar recoil threw off the aim on her next shot, but she quickly remembered her training and compensated, taking better aim and driving home 7 shots from the powerful magnum. 3 of them missed outright, three struck the Elite in the chest and drained what little of his shielding was left. The final round drove itself through its neck and up through its lower skull on the other side, killing the dominating combatant instantly.

It fell heavily to the ground, the momentum imparted on it by the rounds causing it to topple away from her and the ONI officer. As the Elite slumped, so did she, allowing her arm to lower as she leant back flat on her back and breathed slowly and heavily, remarking at the sheer unlikeliness of their success in that situation.

It felt like an eternity before she felt a hand shake her shoulder, and she opened her eyes to see herself reflected in Kovic's visor leaning over her.

"Not just an engineer, huh?"

She squinted, coughing. "What?"

"You're also a guardian angel and a crack shot. Can you move?"

She tested that for herself, slowly getting to her feet with the help of the ODST and turning to face Haverson, who himself was on his feet and limping towards them.

"I guess we're even, as long as you're only counting today" His pained smile flashed briefly across his face.

She started laughing in spite of her situation, causing yet another coughing fit.

Kovic slapped her on the back "How does it feel to down your first gator?"

"Climactic" She responded once her breathing had settled.

"Sounds about right."

Haverson located and retrieved his rifle as well as Kovic's SMG, handing the latter over to its owner. "Come on, Nakatomi Plaza isn't getting any closer."

"Yes sir." Kovic looked back at the remains of the rather one-sided firefight "Best thing we can do for Jackson's memory is get the hell out of here." He turned away and lead her away from the scene after the Lieutenant. "Come on Doc, we're going to get you to Nakatomi if it kills me."

 **Sabina-211, Primary Education Facility 2401-E,** **August 16** **th** **2552, 17:01 Zulu Time**

She hated schools. They always reminded her of the first few days at boot camp, the confusion, loneliness, melancholy. She'd just been taken from her parents and friends and thrust into a strict military education, lessons every day from 9-5, with calisthenics and marches bookending it. Now she realised that they were trying to keep the young Spartans' minds occupied to keep them from thinking of home, but it didn't make remembering that time in her life any easier. In fact it added a touch of cold bitterness to her recollections, the knowledge that they were all just being controlled and manipulated to maximise team cohesion and productivity.

It was as Martinez, Haverson and her ran through the echoing corridors of Primary Education facility 2401-E that these memories jostled for position in her mind, and she was forced to shove them all to the back as she retained focus on her current task; survival.

"This way" She grunted as they turned into the canteen, the thin door offering little resistance to the force of 500kg of Mjolnir powered armour barrelling through it. Her HUD showed their general direction as North, and the schematics downloaded off of the city's SUPERINTENDANT AI showed that behind the school was a playing field, across which was a subway entrance which they could use to walk the normally trivial distance of three city blocks to Nakatomi Plaza undetected by the Covenant, who were right on their heels.

As they sprinted down the canteen's length, past banches and tables, some meals left half eaten, faint red dots appeared on her motion tracker up ahead. She slowed down to let the other two catch up.

"We've got contacts in the next block. Exit's to our left as we move through these doors, but they'll see us leave, and there's not much in the way of cover out on the field." Martinez looked beaten.

"So what do we do?" The ONI Lieutenant asked, sidearm already clenched in his hands.

"You do nothing until I give the word. Stack up on the exit, I'll move through the floors above us and draw their attention. When I give the word, you sprint across the field, out of the gate and into the subway on the street. I'll clean up here and follow you through." She reloaded her shotgun as she spoke, happy to see her ammunition counter on her HUD reach full. "Questions?"

"Just about a million, but I guess not" Martinez quipped, shaking her head slowly.

"Smart woman" She replied, raising her weapon and moving slowly through the doors out of the canteen and into the dimly lit corridor. The other two followed her closely, both had their handguns at the ready and both were holding them like amateurs. She often wondered who taught normal ONI officers or attachés to shoot, because their technique was sloppier than the average Navy dinner.

Lockers lined either side of them, and at a junction she waved her arm to indicate for the others to head off to the left, which they did promptly. Her mission was going to be a lot more simple; shoot as many covvies as possible, cause as much chaos as possible, and leave no witnesses.

She suppressed a grin as she broke into a run, activating her suit's radio jammer to prevent whatever covenant foot soldiers were in the area from calling for help. As her pounding footsteps resonated through the building, she could see her motion sensor contacts react, closing in on her location like flies on shit. She took a set of stairs four at a time, bursting out into a second floor corridor and ducking into a classroom.

She snaked a fibre-optic camera underneath the doorway and out into the hallway. On connecting her helmet feed to it, she saw a pair of Sangheili warriors charge through the same stairwell she had, wielding plasma rifles and carbines. They began to move towards her classroom, and were joined by a half-dozen Unggoy, chittering and barking amongst themselves, excitedly hunting down the Demon. They would get their wish soon enough.

She slowly stood up against the doorway, her body surging with adrenaline, waiting for the Sangheili to open the door.

The handle turned. She swung round in front of the door and unleashed a jackhammer kick into the door, crumpling the metal and firing the metal portal outwards into the alien, who was thrown along with it into the bank of lockers on the other side of the hall.

She followed suit, rounding the corner and pumping an 8 gauge shell into the other Sangheili, breaking its shields and sending spurts of purple blood flying. She followed up with another round to the head, neutralising the alien combatant before the grunts had had time to even raise their weapons, let alone fire them.

As the second shotgun shell clattered to the ground, silence fell upon the corridor. She looked at the group of grunts, every one of them too stunned by the swift disposal of their two leaders to react.

"Boo." She said calmly, turning her helmet lamps onto their full brightness.

The gaggle of diminutive aliens turned tail and ran, some abandoning their weapons entirely, others scrambling over their comrades to get away from her, screaming for their lives and waddling away as fast as their little legs could carry them.

Even as she savoured that moment of childish mischief, she saw multiple contacts rapidly approaching her position on her motion tracker. Things were about to get busy.

She fired a couple of warning shots after the Grunts and turned to run back down the corridor away from them. She could hear the panic she'd incited, the high pitched squealing of grunts echoing after her, the lower snarls and growls of Sangheili as they hurried to work out her location.

"Find the demon!" She heard one Elite roar, the translation software doing very well to encapsulate the venom in its voice. "It went to the upper level!"

She skidded to a halt just next to a door to another stairwell, listening to the pounding footsteps of another combatant heading directly towards her. She waited patiently for her prey to approach, and was rewarded when the door burst open to reveal another Elite. She grabbed the elongated barrel of its carbine and wrenched it from its grip, using it as a club to deliver a crushing blow on the alien's skull before tossing it aside.

The Sangheili, stunned by the ferocity of the attack, retreated back into the stairwell, reaching for its Energy Sword with one hand and raising its other to fend off further blows. She pressed her advantage, lashing out with her right foot and snapping its left leg like a toothpick. As it howled in pain, she brandished her razor-sharp combat knife and drove it home in the creature's exposed neck, lashing out one last time to push the Elite over the banister on the upper level, sending it down to land heavily onto the stone steps in a rapidly widening pool of its own blood.

"That's for Reach" She said calmly, stowing her combat blade and rushing off again down the corridor.

 **Dr Martinez**

"What the hell is going on up there?" She whispered intensely. Her and Haverson had heard multiple gunshots, screaming, what sounded like a grenade detonating and a barrage of plasma fire from other places in the building.

He shook his head "I don't know, but I feel bad for the Covenant."

"Shouldn't we go, while they're busy with her?"

"Not until the Spartan tells us to." He insisted.

"By the time she does that, they'll have radioed for h…" She trailed off, suddenly cut off by the deafening silence.

"Go, run now!" The Spartan's voice echoed off of the walls.

They were both spurred into action, pushing open the door and beginning their mad dash across the field. Her breath filled her ears, surpassed only by the thundering of her heartbeat as she followed the Lieutenant towards their goal; a metal gate on the opposite side of the field, about 400 metres away.

She felt something whizz by her head, and saw dirt being kicked up ahead of her, purple-tinged needle-like projectiles detonating on contact, which only spurred her onwards faster. She craned her neck around to look behind them, and saw the two-storey school building falling behind her quickly, the source of the enemy fire uncertain.

"Where is she?" She gasped in between breaths, scanning her vision for any sign of the imposing Spartan.

Her question was answered moments later when a small section of a second-storey window exploded outwards in a shower of glass, brick and metal. Within the debris, she could clearly see the distinctive outline of the Spartan as she powered out of the building, landing squarely on the asphalt playground and dragging something in her left hand. She was forced to look around to check where she was going, but when she looked back the Spartan was sprinting at unnatural speed towards them, having discarded what she now saw was the broken and mangled body of a Jackal sniper behind her.

"Doc!" Haverson yelled, and she ran through the open gate and into the street, stopping, bent double to catch her breath.

The Spartan came only a second later, dust and debris still rolling off of her shields, which flickered a dull yellow.

"The Metro, now." The super-soldier ordered, and practically dragged her and the Lieutenant across the street and into the underground entrance.

"I agree Lieutenant" She panted.

"What's that Doc?" He responded, still breathing heavily.

She laughed, body buzzing off adrenaline "I feel sorry for the Covenant too"

 **Jacob-209**

"Outstanding" Kovic mumbled. "Now what?"

He didn't respond for a minute, calibrating his motion sensors to detect even the slightest movement. "We get through this. Stay close to me, call out anything you see, shimmering in the air, anything."

"Copy that" Kovic said, and they started slowly moving through the store.

His head pounded with his own heartbeat. He forcibly slowed his breathing, heightening his senses to any input which would give their hunters away. They crept past ceiling-high shelves of goods, from laundry detergent to the latest PlayBox VR entertainment system, all packaged and ready to be stacked into the shop behind them.

He picked up at least four hostiles within a 25m radius, their icons flickering as the motion detection system struggled to accurately display their exact location. Him and the ODST slowly danced around the patrolling hostiles, avoiding their direct lines of sight, ducking behind crates and darting across walkways. They approached the loading bay door and ran into a little problem; an Elite was standing right in front of the rolling shutters, its outline barely visible due to the combined camouflage system and dark interior. They were crouched behind a forklift about five metres away from it.

"We've got to take him out." He said calmly, noting the three other contacts approaching their general position slowly. He pulled the pin on a flashbang grenade. "When this goes off, slot him."

"My pleasure" kovic muttered, taking aim with his suppressed SMG.

Jake waited precisely 2 seconds and then tossed the concussive grenade, not at the enemy in front of them, but away into the opposite corner of the warehouse. The device didn't have time to hit the ground before it detonated, giving off a deafening bang and setting off a slower burning magnesium compound-based fire, blinding any who looked at it. The enemies moved towards it, shouting in their thick language at each other.

Right on cue, the quietened sputter of Kovic's weapon blended into the background noise as he unloaded an entire clip of armour piercing ammunition into the barely visible Elite. The energy shields petered out of existence and the shimmering air materialised alongside spurts of bright purple blood as the alien went down.

"Exit's clear, move now."

The rest of the enemy didn't have a chance to figure out what had happened before Jake was sprinting past it to the loading bay door, dropping his weapon and squatting, jamming his fingers underneath the heavy metal, he wrenched the door open about three feet, enough for Kovic to roll under quickly, grabbing the Spartan's rifle as he went. Jake swung himself under the door, out into a dark alleyway.

The sudden influx of light had obviously alerted the rest of the Elites, as their confused shouting took on a more fevered pitch and their motion tracker icons moved towards them.

"Move, down the alley, stick to the shadows" He ordered, accepting his rifle back and crouching in between two dumpsters next to the loading bay. "When I say, make some noise."

The ODST sprinted away from him, taking refuge inside a doorway.

The first of three Sangheili walked carefully past him, not spotting him under the small pile of garbage bags he had pulled down on top of himself. As the third one made its way past him, he buzzed once on his comms, which triggered the loud whistle coming from kovic's direction.

He burst from his hiding place, whipping out his razor-sharp combat knife as he did so, drawing it forcefully along the back of the trailing combatant's left leg, slicing through flesh and splitting blood vessels. As the enemy went down, screaming in pain, he swept his assault rifle up and began firing, finishing off the wounded elite quickly and sparking the shields of the next one.

The middle Elite reacted quickly, raising its plasma rifle and loosing a burst of plasma which blossomed over the Spartan's own energy shields, draining them significantly and pushing him back slightly. One burst of plasma from the other Elite drained his shields to almost nil and splashed over his rifle, easily melting the weapon and rendering it useless.

Jake then did something really stupid; he charged the aliens. Dropping his warped rifle, he punched the first Elite in the throat, using its body as a shield against the other's fire. As his target choked for air and spat blood on to his visor, he drove his knife into its chest and deftly ripped the warrior's Energy Sword from its holster on its hip.

He then propped the dying Elite's body up, carrying it forward with him as he charged the last hostile, which struggled to get a clean shot on the Spartan behind his downed comrade.

His shield found one last burst of strength as they went, and in one final act of spite, fired his plasma rifle blindly. With the weapon jammed in between them, there was only one way the shots could go.

He felt burning, searing pain flare up in his left thigh, but he suppressed it as he pushed the Elite into his ally, using the brief moment of incapacitation to activate the stolen sword, forcing the twin blades of crackling, pure white energy through the pair of them. Shields flared and dissipated, weapons dropped to the floor, dying gurgles rattled on, and then it was all over.

He stood up from the tangles heap of limbs, his left leg shuddering and smarting as he did so. Upon a cursory examination he discovered a blackened streak on his leg. His suit's diagnostics told him that he was still vacuum proof, but the sheer heat from the plasma had burned the top of his thigh. He breathed heavily and walked towards the ODST's position, stowing the handle of the energy sword onto his thigh holster.

"Holy shit" Kovic muttered "You okay?"

He nodded, reaching around to his back to grab his DMR, flicking the safety off. "We need to move, someone will come looking for them."

They jogged down the length of the alley and into another building.

"Keep up Corporal." He said, wincing at his injury "We've a long way to go yet."

 **Sara**

"Where have you gone now?" She muttered, eyes glued to her rifle's scope. She'd been waiting in her static post in the 2nd floor of an apartment block for 25 minutes, waiting for the last Elite from the unit sent to hunt her down to round the corner.

For the last couple of hours since they'd been forced to split up, she'd been calmly and carefully picking off members of the enemy squad, remaining in the shadows and using hit-and run techniques to ensure maximum damage dealt and minimum chance of detection. She'd started with the Grunts, waiting until they were bunched up and then shooting squarely into one of the methane tanks with an Armour Piercing round, igniting the flammable gas inside. Their numbers were reduced significantly with each attack, and the fear and panic instilled in them had more than the desirable effect. She even observed one Unggoy apparently pleading with the ranking Elite to call off the hunt, but the towering alien threw his inferior aside and barked orders to resume the search.

She never took more than one shot from any one location, and each shot found its mark. Once the Grunts had been dealt with, she moved onto the Elites. One by one they were struck down as if by some vengeful deity, the sounds of their lifeless corpses hitting the floor preceding the sharp rapport of her weapon. Now it was just the Ultra left, and his time was soon approaching. In the last half an hour the sun had set enough for her to turn on her low-light and night vision filters, so now the area in which she predicted her target would appear appeared brightly lit to her eyes. She'd even baited the area, leaving a handful of spent 14.5 x 114mm casings on the ground along with a 24-hour ration bar. She was hoping that the distinctive aromas of the disgusting rations and cordite would at least interest the Elite. Just to be sure, she had fired a burst of fire from her M7 into the air to attract the unfortunate Sangheili into her trap.

She was tempted to give up and relocate as the thought that maybe the Elite had given up the hunt crossed her mind, but then movement in her periphery caught her eye, and she sprang into action. The flash of motion she'd noticed was not, as she'd intended, the result of the Ultra moving around the street corner 500 metres away, but said Ultra creeping around in the next apartment to her perch. A partial view of the alien's shoulder was visible through a scorched hole in the apartment wall, and it was through this that she dove as she unloaded with her SMG into its back, leaving her sniper rifle in the neighbouring domicile.

The Elite swung round, opening fire before it had had time to aim, spraying a rapid burst of blue plasma across the room from its Plasma Repeater. She rolled behind a couch and pushed off at the other end, diving into the kitchen as she loosed another burst of fire as its legs. The Ultra's shield flared into life, absorbing the rounds seemingly without cost.

It roared and burst into the room, and she barely had enough time to throw herself through another doorway before the spot she had been crouching in was burned away by incredibly rapid-fire plasma rounds. She contorted her body to spring backwards onto the wall right next to the doorway into the kitchen and waited for the Elite to come blustering through, which he did a second later, already firing his weapon into the room.

As he crossed the threshold, snarling something unintelligible, she pressed the muzzle of her SMG into its side and pulled the trigger, using her left hand to deliver a power-hammer punch to the Ultra's weapon, sending it clattering across the wooden floor and snapping several of his fingers in the process.

As the Elite's shields popped, she kicked its legs out from under it and delivered the fatal shots to the ugly creature's head. As it slumped to the ground and she reloaded, a patchy radio transmission came through, and she recognised the voice of whoever was in charge at Nakatomi Plaza.

"…. Anyone give assistance?... sniper fire on our western face, no clear line of sight…." The transmission was interrupted by static, but she risked breaking radio silence to respond.

"This is Spartan-170, I read you but you're breaking up, how copy?"

"Spartan? I need you to take out some Jackal snipers to our west, we can't get a clear shot at them without drawing a whole mess of beam rifle fire."

"Copy that, I'm within range of them" She responded, using data being sent to her HUD to estimate the rough location of the troublesome snipers. "Hold on Nakatomi, 170 out."

Technically speaking her rifle was only rated for a maximum of 2.3 kilometres, but she'd made some rather unique modifications to it, and she guessed that the Jackals' approximate distance from her of 2.5 clicks would be just about reachable if she could get a decent sightline. She grabbed her rifle and made her way out of the apartment block, scanning the nearby rooftops for a suitable spot, settling for a clock tower attached to the local UNSC recruitment centre.

The climb up the tower didn't take her long, her progress impeded only by a rather flimsy fire door which was 'unlocked' after three good kicks. As she set up position, she lamented the fact that she had no dedicated spotter with her. She set up the rangefinder next to her and laid out three magazines of APFDS ammunition within easy reach before she laid prone with her rifle and sighted up, starting with a lower magnification before honing in on the target building, scanning for any movement.

While she was doing this, her breathing was slow and deep, her mind a calm ocean as she entered a Zen state, focussing only on her targets and her actions. She identified her first victim and felt the familiar recoil of her weapon as she fired the first shot, compensating for wind speed and bullet drop instinctively. The Jackal went down in an explosion of blood, as did its 3 comrades in rapid succession. She exhaled as she reloaded, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, which was quickly replaced by a grimace as her long-range sensors picked up a flight of banshees rapidly approaching her position.

"Oh come on." She moaned to herself, rapidly altering her position to face the new threat, pumping two rounds into the centre of mass of the two leading fliers, each of which detonated in a flash of blue before plummeting into the streets below. The last Banshee rolled out of the way of its neutralised comrades and darted towards her tower, fuel rod canon charging, emitting a faint green glow as it hurtled towards her.

She grabbed her ammunition and spotter and hurried out of the open and into the stairwell, taking it four steps at a time, counting down in her head until the deadly explosive round hit.

Her count was off by a fraction of a second, and the round hit the tower's peak just as she hit the halfway point. The entire structure shook around her, and a significant amount of stonework and rubble cascaded down the stairs after her, coating her in dust and almost knocking her off balance. She tore out of the collapsing tower and out of the recruitment office onto the street, setting off in the direction of Nakatomi Plaza, which now loomed over her, blocking out the setting sun.

She looked behind her at the collapsed ruin that was the clock tower, stowing her rifle and shaking her head slightly as she moved off. If Spartans drank, she'd be expecting a whole crate from the guys at Nakatomi, and maybe a promotion. The night was still young.

 **Petty Officer Sara-170, 30 minutes later**

"Spartan-170 to Fireteam Resistance, I'm approaching your position from the South-East, IFF tag is live." She calmly said over the radio, picking herself up from the dusty debris next to a destroyed building and jogging across the parking lot towards the foyer of the imposing Nakatomi Plaza residential complex, an enormous skyscraper which stood proudly among the other smaller buildings of the city's residential district. She had spent the last 20 minutes or so scouting the entrance to the building from a distance, observing the scorched walls surrounding the main entrance and the numerous alien corpses littered around the immediate area. The sun was just beginning to set, and the dying light of the day threw long amber-clad shadows up against the smooth steel and glass of the building. As she closed on the entrance, her thermal filters picked up the dozen or so heat signatures dotted around the lobby and her sensors registered the deactivation of three automated turrets in the same room.

She slowed to a walk as she passed through the doorway and stowed her SMG onto her thigh holster, glancing around at the assembled Marines quickly. They all seemed pretty badly beaten up, a couple of them had obvious wounds, blanketed in white field dressings, but all still held their weapons with steely determination. Her feet trailed through a sea of spent casings on the marble floor, scattering them. Several sandbag walls had been erected in the space, along with a couple of portable metal covers strategically placed, all pointing towards the doorway. Three complicated-looking gun turrets had been placed on the front desk of the lobby and it was around these devices that the highest concentration of casings could be found. The entire room had been practically demolished. There were scorch marks everywhere, and all along the back wall behind the desk needle rounds had embedded themselves in the information displays, huge tracts of brute spiker rounds in lines of automatic fire had impaled themselves in every wall.

A Marine pilot wearing a flight suit and full helmet vaulted the desk and came out towards her, holstering his sidearm and saluting.

"Ma'am, it's good to have you here, Lieutenant Danse is upstairs, follow me." He said, waving for her to follow him as he turned and walked briskly over to the elevator at the back of the room.

She followed, conscious of the may eyes on her as she went. Most personnel in the UNSC had never seen a Spartan in the flesh, so they tended to draw attention from the ranks wherever they went. She knew Jacob hated it, but she herself couldn't care less. She was here to do a job, to complete an objective, and if some guys stared at her for a bit, fine.

They entered the elevator. The doors slid closed and they began rising, accompanied by awkward and tinny renditions of Mozart. She'd once hear that elevator companies deliberately made the audio files on these things low quality to give it a more authentic feel. She'd also heard that the Navy did the same with its rations, so maybe there was some truth to it.

"You're the last one to arrive" The Corporal informed her "The other two arrived together about 30 minutes ago, everyone accounted for."

Much to her surprise, she felt a great deal of dread lift from her mind. She didn't realise how much she'd worried for the others. There had been so much activity on the streets, she had wondered how either of the other two, who were (unlike her) burdened with human baggage, could have avoided all that. She looked down at the pilot. He had accurately surmised that the Spartan would be worried about her comrades, and the fact that he had been right alarmed her slightly. She wasn't used to being understood by anyone other than other Spartans. She felt vulnerable. It was unsettling to say the least, and was not helped by the fact that it had been such an innocent act that had triggered her feelings.

"Thanks Corporal." She managed to mumble after a pause, and the relief of the elevator doors couldn't have come soon enough to dispel the bizarre circumstance she found herself in.

Once at the 50th floor, they disembarked and the Marine led her down narrow corridors past open doors to apartments. Each domicile housed at least a half a dozen soldiers in various states of health. Some flats had a dozen laughing men inside playing cards and smoking, while the next would be a wing of a makeshift field hospital. Sterile field generators chugged away in the centre of the room filled with wounded and a few medics hurriedly treating the most severely injured. The moans and occasional screams followed them long after they had passed out of earshot.

They appeared to be heading further down the hallway, but before they could get to their destination, the bulky form of Sabina filled the corridor in front of them, turning to face them.

"I'll take it from here Lieutenant" She said in her Slavic-accented voice, sublimed with a hint of force that only a fool would dare go against.

"Affirmative Petty Officer, I'll return to my post then." The soldier calmly accepted the order, even though he outranked both of them. There was a certain point when it came to Spartans that the chain of command became a little slanted.

"This way. Jake's making nice with some Marine Captain, trying to come up with a game plan for getting us out of the city." Sabina said as they walked, occasionally having to duck under doorframes.

"Who's 'us'?" She replied "As far as the mission goes, we just need to get Martinez out. Anyone else is just going to slow us down."

She shrugged, a feat notoriously difficult to perform in Mjolnir armour "Worst comes to worst, we'll cut these guys loose and hope they make it, but you and I both know that Jay's not leaving here without them."

"He'll make it work." She said calmly "Where's the Doc? I assume she made it here in one piece."

"She's here, thank you very much. Not that you can talk, getting here half an hour after us without the excuse of having to drag a civvie and a uniform with you." Sara could tell that she was smirking behind the visor. They had always kept a running score of who got there first to objectives, who got the highest kill count on the way there. "How many'd you get this time?"

"14. Plus three fliers, what did we say those were worth?" She asked

"Three each, but we established during Operation Trebuchet that you can't count the pilots as well."

"Ah, then 20, you?"

"Only 13." She mumbled. Sabina hated losing. "The Doc's through here."

They pushed through a doorway to a high-end apartment and made their way past the tastefully decorated open-plan kitchen and into the living room. On the sofa in front of the wall-mounted 100-inch TV was Kovic, helmet off, feet up on the coffee table, snoring loudly. At the dining table Martinez and Haverson sat drinking coffee and conversing in low tones. A Navy Corpsman sat next to the Doctor, holding her injured arm and gently manipulating the angle of each joint to check the range of motion. They looked round at the Spartans as they entered.

"How is she?" Sara asked the Corpsman, laying her rifle down on top of one of the kitchen's granite countertops.

"Not too bad, a little swelling around the joint, but no permanent damage." He assessed, letting his patient's arm go. He stood up from the table. "Well Doc, best of luck to you, I need to get back to triage."

He saluted Haverson, nodded to the Spartans and left, whistling tunelessly.

No sooner had the medic pushed through the door than Jake strode in, nodding to her in greeting. As soon as she saw him she knew something was wrong. For one thing, he was walking with a limp, probably due to whatever had caused large black scorch mark over his right thigh. But that concerned her little, if he was walking on it, he was fine. What worried her is the ever so subtle body language clues he was displaying, his neck under the bodysuit was tense, and he refrained from looking at the others in the room, just motioned the two Spartans to follow him as he strode through the room and into the bathroom.

She followed Sabina, closing the door behind them before turning to face them, opening a private Comm link between the three of them.

"What's got you in a huff?" Sab asked, tilting her head slightly.

"Tell you guys later, now we need to focus." He said "How do we get 50 men and ourselves out of the city while not getting killed in the process?"

She snorted "No way. We can get ourselves and the package out with few problems, hell we could even walk out of here, but an entire platoon?" She shook her head

"I have to say Jay, there's no simple way to do it, considering half of them can't walk and we don't exactly have the advantage of air support, or even any support at all." Sab admitted, sighing.

She nodded agreement "Precisely. Jake, even with CAS this would be a mammoth task, and we don't have a lot of time to organise-"

"Mammoth" Jake blurted out "Hold up." He fell silent, and she guessed that he was bringing up something on his helmet's HUD "Bingo. Oliphants."

He snapped his finger and shared his finding across all three of their displays, and a schematic diagram of an M310 Oliphant garbage truck, one of the many employed by the Manassas Waste Management Department to ferry garbage from the inner city to the processing plant in the next valley. The civilian variant of the UNSC's Elephant mobile assault platform had been widely adopted across UEG space, and were usually controlled by a city's Superintendent-class AI.

"What's your thinking?"

"We pack the Oliphants with wounded, drive them out of the city. With any luck the Covvies just think that they're automated, and if not, we'll have some anti-air support from the AAA on the roof here. We'll have to provide a distraction to draw fire away from the trucks and throw them off the trail." He said excitedly, bringing up maps of the city and overlaying various keys, one showing the location of the city's 28 Oliphants, one showing a circle around Nakatomi plaza indicating the effective range of the missile system on its roof.

"Jake, that's…" She began, wiping her HUD clear with a flick of the wrist.

"Inspired?" He interjected

"I was going to go with insane, but yeah, Inspired works too." She grimaced.

"We can make this work, I'm going to talk to the Captain, stay with the package, I'll be back soon." He said, practically running through the apartment back out into the corridor.

"This is a bad idea" She said to Sab, mentally listing through all the ways in which this half-plan could go wrong.

"Maybe, but these guys don't really have much of a chance without us. You've seen the state of the lobby, what happens when the covenant realise that three Spartans are holed up here? They'll throw everything they have against this place" Sabina responded calmly. "Besides, if it all goes wrong, we'll come up with a contingency that produces the best possible results for us and the package."

Sara said nothing, for now she was reassured that Sab remained as realistic as ever. The two Spartans re-joined the others in the apartment's living space, standing next to the kitchen table and awaiting Jake's return.

They waited for what seemed like an eternity, fending off questions from Martinez and Haverson until Jake returned, a fresh sense of urgency in his gait and tone.

"Everyone, up and ready, Doctor Martinez, you're with Haverson, Kovic and Sabina, Sara, with me." He ordered, spurring the room into life. Kovic grumbled about being woken up and picked up his rifle wearily, Martinez and Haverson looked like they were fit to burst with questions, but they held their tongues for now.

"The rest of you, through there, the Captain will brief you, we're headed out." He said, leading her back towards the elevators. The rest of their group headed in the opposite direction down the hallway.

"Mind telling me what we're doing?" She asked, staring at the back of the CPO's head

"We're the matador's red cape" He replied as they stepped into the elevator and the god-awful music started up again softly.

"And how exactly are we to do that?"

"Are you still certified for the M850?"

She turned her head slightly to face him, then looked back at the doors in front of her "Yep, definitely insane, 100%"

 **CPO Jacob-209, 1 hour later**

"She's a hefty beast isn't she?" He remarked, taking a step back to admire the twin-barelled M850 Grizzly MBT. The tank was effectively an up-armoured and up-armed variant of the traditional M808 Scorpion, and were legendary for taking extraordinary amounts of damage before needing repairs, so much so that some covenant strike forces avoided tackling the massive vehicles and opted to call in orbital bombardment in order to deal with them.

"The 178th armoured division deployed a handful to the city. According to the data logs, this one had its crew removed by some rather unhappy Elites, but is otherwise undamaged." He continued, jumping up onto the crew hatch and syncing with the tank's systems. "Everything checks out, lets get this thing moving."

He hopped down off of the matte-grey armour plating of one of the four tread bogeys, watching as Sara stowed her sniper rifle within the cramped driving compartment and slid herself expertly into the seat so that only the top of her helmet was visible as the armoured crew hatch slid over her, sealing her in.

He took another step back as the Grizzly's enormous engine roared into life. A layer of dust vibrated itself loose from the surfaces of the vehicle and the menacing shape of the twin 120mm canons swivelled around on their massive turret to face him.

"Don't go getting any ideas, everything feel good?" He said, searching the destroyed UNSC checkpoint for any remaining heavy weaponry. He found a dented M41 SPNKr Rocket Launcher and a couple of spare tubes amidst the bodies and melted vehicles.

"All systems online, let's go make some noise." Sara said over comms, swinging the turret forward and gently accelerating the 70-ton goliath toward the city centre. He mounted a Warthog they'd found a few blocks previously and followed the wide assault vehicle, keeping a close eye on the shy for incoming banshees. They were well outside the protective range of the Nakatomi missile battery, so if any fliers noticed their night-time rampage before it had begun, the Warthog's chain gun along with a handful of SPNKr rockets were their only defence.

"Spartan 209, this is Nakatomi Actual, Oliphants are beginning to roll in, you may begin your diversionary assault. Good hunting, over." A voice crackled through his helmet.

"Copy that, Nakatomi Actual, good luck, over." He broadcast, hoping that the lax radio protocols would pique the covenant's attention. "Next right Petty Officer, straight to Municipal Park."

Quiet fell upon the two-vehicle convoy, apart from the low throaty whine of the Warthog's engine and the surprisingly silent drone of the Grizzly's power plant, coupled with the counterintuitively delicate plinking of the tank's treads on the road's surface.

"Jake. Reach is falling." Sara's voice came through quiet and calm.

"I know." He paused, unable to articulate his thoughts, before deciding to remain silent.

"Enemy position sighted, 12 o'clock, 800 metres." The tank ground to a halt, and he pulled the Warthog over to the side of the street to get a better view; dead ahead, across the river, was the pre-fabricated enemy command post, a collection of domed structures arranged in rows in the centre of the city's municipal park. He could just about see the rows and rows of enemy armoured vehicles; wraiths, ghosts, spectres, any and all variants of covenant armour, along with a squadron of Banshee fliers laid out like dominoes.

"You may fire when ready" He breathed into his mic, using his helmet's optics to zoom in on the scene. He didn't want to miss this.

The still air of the city centre was shattered by twin roars as the Grizzly opened fire on the buildings with High Explosive rounds, sending jets of purple and blue tinged flame soaring into the sky, illuminating the treeline and buildings, throwing angry shadows across the ground. He watched in awe as the war machine spewed a barrage of 120mm shells into the heart of the covenant occupation in Manassas, alternately switching between HE and Canister rounds, devastating the structures and setting an entire row of enemy wraiths ablaze.

"Pull back, we've got their attention" He ordered, swinging the Hog around and charging back down the street to a parking lot about a kilometre away, leaving the LRV on the ground floor and then jumping out with the recovered Rocket Launcher.

"Copy, pulling back to position two" Sara confirmed, throwing the tank into reverse and backing up to a choke point a few blocks away from the first firing position. It was there that he joined her, SPNKr on his shoulder, facing down one of the three streets that the enemy counterattack would likely come, with the Grizzly sitting squarely in the middle of the crossroads.

They didn't have to wait long. Within a minute a pair of Ghosts sped into view on the right hand side, firing blue plasma bolts at the imposing hull of the Grizzly. They were quickly obliterated by the tank's main guns, only to be followed by a whole squad of infantry, darting from cover to cover, occasionally loosing a plasma bolt of needle round at their position.

"Left side, left side, I got a Pair of Hunters hiding behind the bank." Sara informed him "No clear shot"

"Take the building down, I'll focus on the infantry at our 3." He charged over to an abandoned car, resting his launcher against its wheel arch and engaging the crowd of grunts and jackals that he could see through his night vision filters, peppering them with armour-piercing rounds. The ground shook as the Grizzly bellowed out more rounds at the Hunters. He didn't look around, but he heard and felt the thunderous crashing as the building collapsed on the two Hunter warriors.

"Wraiths at our 12, engaging."

"Copy, banshees, fast and low" he responded, tossing a fragmentation grenade at the remaining infantry and rushing to grab the SPNKr and find a good firing position, unobstructed by buildings.

No sooner had he taken a position than the single Banshee flier swooped past, barely visible in the blackness, only visible thanks due to reflections from its bodywork from the fires at the covenant camp and his thermal filters. He struggled to track the aircraft as it darted through the sky, sticking below the silhouettes of the buildings all around him.

A wraith in the distance exploded, burning with a raging, pure white flame while another slung a bright blue plasma mortar round into the sky, which arced over them and collided with a bus 30 metres behind them, instantly reducing the front half to a melted puddle. He heaved the Rocket Launcher onto his shoulder and tracked the elusive Banshee, waiting for the thermal lock-on to engage. The fighter ducked below out of view and then back into view, approaching them rapidly from behind the tank, under the skyline. He pulled the trigger, and two rockets soared away from them, snaking up through the air to impact against the hull, destroying the enemy instantly in a ball of flame, the wreckage listing to one side, colliding with a storefront and detonating, throwing debris and shrapnel across the street.

"Banshee down, how're those wraiths looking?" He asked, discarding the spent tubes of the SPNKr and loading a fresh set, the tubes rotating smoothly into the 'fire' position.

"Got no shot on the last one, and he's getting more accurate with the mortar." Sara replied through gritted teeth. He looked back towards the tank just in time to see a blazing ball of death fall onto the front right tread of the tank, warping the armour plating and tearing portions of it off.

"Focus on the Spectres on the left, I'll go after the Wraith" He ordered, sprinting past the damaged Grizzly and down the street, keeping to the shadows. His heart pounded in his ears almost louder than his rapid breathing. Behind him he heard the tank's coaxially mounted LMG open up on what he assumed would be some very unfortunate infantry. Skidding to halt at a street corner before rounding it and firing another pair of rockets at the hard-to-miss form of the Wraith. The gunner on the pintle-mounted plasma canon had barely enough time to fire a few bolts of bright blue plasma at the retreating Spartan before the 40mm rockets slammed into the front of the cabin one after another, crumpling it like paper, knocking the vehicle out.

Satisfied that the wraith was down, he sprinted back towards Sara, dumping the spent rocket tubes on the ground as he went, stowing the empty launcher on his back and shouldering his rifle. He slid back into position behind a at this point half melted car and opening fire on the growing crowd of infantry advancing on their position.

"Infantry on my side" He called out, throwing his last grenade over his cover into a building in which a squad of enemy had gathered, preparing to storm their position.

"Fantastic" Sara said, voice dripping with sarcasm as the bulky turret swivelled around and started shooting, blowing away cover and filling the space with lead.

A voice cut on the radio cut through the chaos "Nakatomi Actual to Spartan 209, wounded are on board, we're shutting down the ops centre and pulling out now, over."

"Copy Nakatomi Actual, we'll finish up here and fall back, over and out." He replied, slapping a fresh magazine into his rifle. "Sab, you hold down the fort until we get there, keep the AA battery up and running to give the Oliphants cover."

The other Spartan responded quickly "Affirmative, Doc's keeping the turrets loaded and primed, I'm on babysitting duty."

"Keep me posted" He cut off their comm line as he finished squeezing off bursts into a grunt squad. He looked up into the sky and smiled with satisfaction; the corvette was moving into position to fire on them directly. The flickering flames from the destroyed command post danced off of the smooth curving hull of the warship, making it seem like a ghostly spectre descending on them, cloaked in shadow and draped in light. Right on cue.

"Sara, next stage." He barked, ducking behind his cover and cueing up SATCOM on his HUD. As the satellites synchronised with his suit's systems, the Grizzly belched its final shots, firing canister shell rounds into the streets which exploded into shrapnel and shredded what little infantry remained.

"ODP _Esposz,_ this is Sierra-209 requesting orbital MAC strike on my position, authorisation code Victor-Sierra-9-3-Delta, over." His voice appeared as a waveform on his screen as he waited for the response.

"Sierra-209, this is ODP _New Alexandria_ Fire Control, afraid the _Esposz_ is a melted pool of slag, we'll have to do. Atmospheric MAC strike on SDV-class Corvette inbound in 60 seconds, advise you leave the area and withdraw to a minimum safe distance of 2 kilometres, over." The calm female voice came back, and confirmation orders were displayed on his HUD as the massive Orbital Defence Platform slowly turned around to point its massive 'Super' MAC canon downwards. The Corvette wouldn't even know what hit it.

"Ready." Sara said, having already clambered out of the tank with her sniper rifle in hand. They set off together back down the road towards the Warthog, sprinting as fast as they could. Sara threw her rifle into the passenger foot well and jumped into the driver's seat as he hauled himself onto the turret position and thumbed the priming trigger to test that the gun worked.

He'd barely settled behind the gun when Sara gunned it out of the parking lot and out onto the street. He held on for dear life as she turned to race away from the pursuing Corvette. He swung the gun around to face the pursuer and spotted a pair of banshees bearing down on them. He thumbed the trigger and opened fire, sending a hail of lead towards them, the spent casings bouncing off of the open back of the Hog and tumbling out into the street. At this range he couldn't tell if his fire was having any effect, but the two fliers peeled off and arced away, so he guessed that they'd been called off by the Corvette.

"Brace yourself!" He yelled as the countdown timer on his HUD reached zero. Thunder roared, his helmet's filters maxed out and shut out all outside noise to stop him from going deaf. Every glass window in the entire inner city shattered explosively. The shockwave was enough to bump their Hog violently, which sent him tumbling out of the gunner position almost out of the vehicle. Thankfully he reached out at the last second and grabbed a handrail, pulling himself inside the passenger seat as Sara struggled to control the LRV. He craned his neck around to see that the corvette had been shattered by the force in the 300 ton MAC round. No piece bigger than a bus was intact, all of it tumbling towards the ground, crashing into the sides of buildings. The MAC round itself had shot clean through the ship and impacted on the ground in the municipal park, and judging from the sheer size of the dust cloud thrown up (which shone and glittered due to the pulverised glass), an enormous crater had probably been left in that area.

"Bugger me" He gasped, settling back into the seat, releasing one of the handholds and noticing that he'd been gripping it so hard that it had bent.

"That was the definition of overkill right there." Sara agreed, still focussed on the road ahead as they sped away from the blast site. "I think getting out of the city just got a whole lot easier"

 **Doctor Salvia Martinez, 10 minutes earlier**

 _Whoever designed this BALLISTA Anti-Air Missile Defence System needs a good slap._ She thought to herself, elbows deep in wiring and hydraulics. The damn thing's autoloader was about as useful as a chocolate fireman. It had broken about 30 minutes before they had arrived at Nakatomi according to the Marines, and it just did not want to play nicely, so for now they, meaning her and the Spartan Sabina-211, were stuck with manually loading each 20kg missile. The Spartan handled the HE warheads as she would a pencil, another testimonial to the unique power of those suits they wore. She would have to look into these armour systems when she got back to the _Hephaestus_.

She shook her head in frustration and spat out the flashlight that she'd been clutching between her teeth in order to see into the depths of the loader. "This thing is toast."

"Shame." The Spartan said emotionlessly, then tilting her head to the side slightly, which was as far as Salvia could tell the only indication that they were talking to each other. "Time to go inside Doc, things are going to get a bit noisier out here in a minute."

"So why couldn't you have taken out the ship sooner?" She asked as she was led back into the building, down the stairwell and into a lavishly furnished apartment. "Would've made my journey so far a little easier."

The Spartan shook her head "Not that easy. As soon as we divert firepower like an ODP MAC round to ground targets, Covenant Command will know that something worth protecting is down here, likely divert something much bigger to find out what." They entered the apartments bathroom, and Sabina pointed to the power shower in the corner "Get in there, don't want something coming loose from the ceiling and killing you."

She raised an eyebrow and stood inside the shower, sliding the reinforced glass door shut "Just how powerful is this MAC round then? We only worked with the Mark 8s with Infinity."

"50 times the mass, thousand times the velocity." The Spartan recalled. "Brace yourself" She said, crouching down and leaning against the wall, and she did the same.

She felt the shockwave ripple through the building, the structure groaned and creaked, and she heard a terrible crashing noise from the other room. She was pushed forcibly off of her crouched feet and into the wall, bruising her cheek and sending her glasses clattering into the other corner of the cubicle. The Spartan didn't so much as sway as a glass on the sink shelf tumbled from its perch and shattered on the tiled floor. A mighty roar filled her ears, oddly muffled inside the enclosed box of the shower.

When her ears stopped ringing she exited the shower and heard a new sound that had not been present before, whistling and moaning of the wind from somewhere.

"Let's go and admire the view Doc." The Spartan said "The others should be back soon."

Less than five minutes later, having admired the view through the now shattered windows of the penthouse apartment, they were back on the roof again, finalising the preparation of the BALLISTA. The missile system had 20 missiles loaded and ready to fire, after that it would need to be manually reloaded again. That gave their little group 20 rockets to cover any significant air threats. When the turret ran out, they would have only small arms to defend themselves against air attack. Hopefully by then the three Spartans and her would have caught up with the convoy of 5 Oliphant garbage trucks that the UNSC forces had loaded into.

"So how long have you three worked together?" She asked the Spartan, not really expecting an answer. If all went to plan, she wouldn't have another opportunity to grill a Spartan alone again, and she had so many questions about the programme, the training, the suits themselves were another level of intrigue.

The Spartan stared at her unmoving. "Classified"

"Of course. I was just thinking about your armour. It looks remarkably compact for something able to generate an energy shield. How did they manage to miniaturise a fusion cell powerful enough to keep that kind of energy flowing? And the punishment those things can take even without shielding. Remarkable." She was babbling and she knew it. She'd hoped that her seemingly inane conversation would spark the soldier to let slip some meaningless detail about the suits. However, these Spartans were as secretive as they were formidable, so she hadn't really expected her ploy to work. She was not disappointed.

"That's classified as well. But you should know that it is not the suit that makes a Spartan."

"Then what does?" She fired back, sensing a way in to a line of questioning.

The Spartan became silent.

"I only ask about the suits because Jacob seemed to have taken a lot of plasma damage to his right thigh, I was wondering if I could help in some way." This was a partial truth, but she wanted any nugget of information.

"Do not worry about Jacob." She said, and Salvia thought she could detect a glint of annoyance in her Slavic tone. "He's fine."

"As you wish" She relented, slumping back up against an AC unit and fiddling with her M6 pistol. The sidearm had already saved her life once, and she wanted to make sure she kept it safe. An odd sense of guilt compelled her to do so, for if the previous owner had not acted as she had, Salvia would likely be a corpse in a burnt Pelican right now. She owed it to Bird to carry it out of here.

"Downtimes over Doc, perimeter tripwire's been tripped." The Spartan said, standing up and moving quickly towards the stairwell.

She followed her, winding down the endless stairs until they emerged into the lobby. The perimeter tripwires were spread around the streets surrounding the tower, and their activation could only mean that covenant ground forces had surrounded the plaza.

"Get in the stairwell, under the stairs, stay there until I tell you, keep your head down, and don't let them take you alive." The Spartan barked as she took up a firing position behind an overturned vending machine.

"Okay" She said, stomach twisted in fear as she huddled behind the concrete stairs and unholstered her pistol.

The gunfire started not long after. The rapport of the Spartan's assault rifle blended with the high pitched whining of plasma weapons discharging, interspersed with the loud booms of what she assumed must be fragmentation grenades. The smell of cordite and ionised air wafted into the stairwell, combining with the smell of her own sweaty clothes. As the skirmish intensified, she heard less and less of the familiar rifle fire and more of the menacing chorus of alien weaponry and the harsh grating orders barked by the enemy combatants.

She cocked her pistol and prepared to fight for her life when a cacophony of noise blared from outside. The roaring of an engine mixed with the deafening ripping of a minigun drowned out all other sound as her reactive ear plugs yet again saved her hearing from permanent damage by expanding in her ear canal and blocking out the orchestra of mayhem. The noise continued for a good three minutes, punctuated by screams and cries as the alien aggressors were cut down. The dust smoke from the skirmish drifted into the stairwell, and she coughed and spluttered as her eyes watered.

Bright cones of light cut through the haze. "Doctor, are you alright?"

She nodded her head and got to her feet, following Sabina out into the lobby, taking note of the fresh collection of scorch marks along every wall. There was a concentration of the marks around where the Spartan had sheltered, behind the main desk, and the structure had started to melt under the punishment. She almost tripped over a dead Grunt on the way out, and saw the remnants of an entire Covenant File scattered around the square, Elites draped over concrete bollards, their heads missing, a pair of Grunts looked like popped tomatoes, and she conceived that they had probably been run down by the Warthog to which she was being led.

"Sab, take the wheel, Doc get in the middle, Sara'll box you in once she's back." Jake said, standing to the rear of the vehicle clearing brass shell casings from the rear bed of the truck.

She hauled her way up into the Warthog's passenger bay and settled in the middle seat, tuning the radio to the UNSC Emergency Broadcast System. The bulletins coming through confirmed the worst; another Fleet had appeared in orbit above reach, many times the size of the raiding party already present on the planet. The Defense Fleet was engaging and taking heavy losses. Mass civilian and military evacuations were taking place across all continents.

Her somber listening was interrupted by the harsh clanging of Sara dumping a series of belts of large calibre ammunition onto the truck bed behind her. "2000 rounds HEDP, courtesy of the 15th Infantry."

"Outstanding" Jake approved, and begin the process of loading the tri-barrelled M41 Vulcan LAAG with the ammunition. She switched the radio off and turned to face the CPO.

"So what's the plan now?" She asked as she felt the vehicle's suspension rock and settle as the other Spartan clambered into the passenger seat of the LRV.

"We catch up with the others and provide covering fire until they reach our lines on the city limits. Then we move on to our extraction point." He said calmly, racking the charging handle on the LAAG and pivoting around, checking his range of motion. "Or should they come under indefensible fire, we bolt for the evac alone."

"We leave them to die?" She asked, horrified.

"Yes, we leave them to fend for themselves. It's the best way to ensure your safety." He stated matter-of-factly. "Sab, punch it, I have a feeling that the Oliphants are going to attract attention."

 **Corporal Adam Kovic, 405** **th** **ODST, Manassass Waste Management Oliphant No.34, 5 kilometres North of Manassass**

"This place smells like shit" He shouted over at Haverson over the noise of the engine. They, along with a dozen other Marines, soldiers and Medics, were packed into the back of an Oliphant along with a single Sterile Field Generator, which hummed and glowed green in the centre of the room. The device killed any micro-organisms in the environment, but did little to stop the foul stench typical to garbage trucks.

The ONI agent nodded, wrinkling his nose. "Beats trying to get out on foot."

Their vehicle had volunteered to be the one heading up the rear of the convoy, ahead of them, 4 other massive tracked vehicle soldiered on out of the city, towards the UNSC's lines another 10 kilometres away. Each Oliphant had 5 men able to fight, a couple of rockets for a SPNKr and whatever small arms ammunition they had been able to carry with them to defend themselves. But so far they had remained inside the vehicles, closed in with the stench.

"Resistance 1, this is Sierra-209, we're on our way to you now, be warned, we see a significant number of enemy aircraft inbound to your position, over." The Spartans voice came over the comms, crackly and distant. The damn bodywork of the Oliphants played hell with their radios.

"Copy that Sierra-209. Alright everybody, canvas up, I want everybody ready to fight ASAP, looks like the Covvies didn't buy the robotic truck thing." He said, cracking open the maintenance hatch in the ceiling and breathing a sigh of relief at fresh air. He settled above the cab of the vehicle with a SPNKr in his hands, looking around to see others from the convoy doing the same. The other able soldiers, including Haverson, clambered out after him, dragging crates of ammo behind them. He adjusted position so that he had some cover from air attack.

"Resistance 1 to any UNSC forces, we are approaching friendly lines and need immediate CAS, over." He broadcast, loading the rocket tubes into the launcher and shouldering it, scanning the skies either side of the road for enemies. Far behind them, the tall towers of Manassass flittered and shone in the moonlight, to their right a range of impossibly high mountains rose from the ground and arced away to the south, their peaks capped in snow. To their left, the Manassass valley stretched away, rolling fields and hills. Under other circumstances he might've taken a picture.

"Copy Resistance 1, two Wombats are on station, ready to provide CAS as needed, out." Came the response from the command centre at Fort Witherson.

"Solid Copy, much obliged Witherson, Resistance out." He grinned. The Wombat was a UAV with enough firepower to level a city block. He was looking forward to seeing the supersonic fighters in action.

"Banshees, fast and low, 4 o'clock!" He heard someone in the front vehicle shout, and as they passed by a fuel station he saw them; the horizon was almost black with the silhouettes of aircraft, easily a dozen of them screaming towards them.

"Mark your targets and communicate!" He shouted, aiming at the far right flier with the targeting scope, waiting for the lock-on noise. He heard a noise, but it wasn't the faint chirping of the weapon, it was a colossal bang from behind him, he spun around to see two impossibly small specs in the sky trailing smoke and lighting up. Jets of propellant spurted from the specs, and raced towards the banshees over their heads. He returned his attention to the rocket launcher.

"Backblast clear!" he shouted before pulling the trigger, launching a rocket into the sky along with the others from the Oliphants. Combined with the missiles fired from the two drones, the banshees didn't really stand a chance. Some of them tried to swerve out of the way, ducking and weaving as the missiles tracked them. Some vapourised in the explosions, others were ripped apart and fell heavily into the surrounding fields.

"That was too easy" He mumbled, his sixth sense screaming at him.

The first indication that anything was wrong was the almost silent scream of a Marine being puled off of the Oliphant in front of him. He heard it though, and jerked his head around to see a group of elites scaling the side of the vehicle. They must've used the Banshees as a distraction. Clever bastards.

"Contact left!" He screamed, throwing the still-loaded rocket launcher at an Elite who had climbed up the side of his Oliphant right next to him. The launcher was heavy enough to knock the alien off balance, and he used it to his advantage, kicking it square in the chest and sending it tumbling off of the side of the truck. He raised his rifle at the next combatant and opened fire, ducking under a clumsy energy sword swing and pressing the muzzle of his gun into the attacker's stomach, disembowelling him with lead. Similar sounds could be heard all along the line, small arms fire combined with the screaming of men and alien alike.

Another Elite came at him, and he raised his hand to stop the downward strike of its energy sword, grabbing at the alien's arm and locking his elbow. He strained to halt the motion, but the elite was stronger and they both knew it. Slowly but surely, the energy sword came closer and closer to his chest.

And then, it was gone. The smoking hole in the elites chest cavity, along with the spray of blue blood all over his helmet were completely silent until a moment later when the sharp rapport of the rifle came from behind the Oliphant. The Elite groaned and slumped backwards, and he turned his head to see the familiar shape of a Warthog racing towards them, the sniper rifle wielded by the passenger still smoking form the life-saving shot.

The Spartans' hog opened up, spraying high-explosive rounds into the Oliphants' attackers. The Hog itself wheeled around to the left hand side of the convoy to better defend them from the infantry attack.

"Armoured column behind us!" He heard one of the female Spartans shout over the radio

"We're on it" The Wombats peeled away from them and circled around, presumably to decimate whatever armour the covenant had left.

"Dead ahead!" The lead vehicle declared, and he saw the Warthog race off ahead of them. He didn't exactly see what happened up there, but by the time his Oliphant rolled through the enemy lines, there were destroyed Wraith tanks and scores of covenant bodies strewn all across the highway and surrounding grassland. He took the time to shoot a couple of hangers-on, amazed by the destruction.

"We're through the enemy lines now" Haverson noted.

"That's it?" He mouthed, looking around suspiciously.

"That's it, now we just-"

The ONI agent was cut off by a thunderous boom echoing through the valley. Kovic immediately reached for his rifle, but there was no imminent threat. So where had the noise come from? He scanned the horizon for a good 20 seconds before a Marine on the next Oliphant exclaimed and pointed.

A gargantuan fireball descended from the sky about 10 kilometres away, the silhouette of a UNSC frigate barely discernible through the lapping flames as it screeched and tumbled, followed by a hail of flaming debris as it burned up in the atmosphere. The ball of fire touched down and exploded, sending a visible shockwave through the earth, followed by an enormous mushroom cloud rising slowly from the crash site. It was a horrific site. And yet he couldn't look away.

They travelled the rest of the journey in silence, all of them sombrely pondering the gravity of the situation a little more pessimistically. It was only when the ODST was loaded up in the back of a Pelican that he spoke, to give his name, rank and serial number to an ONI officer for debriefing. He was to be fast-tracked straight back to Sydney. Part of him wanted to argue, to stay and defend his home. But he was so tired. His entire squad had already paid the price, and he was just relieved to not be sent back to the front for once. He would never admit this out loud, helljumpers had a reputation to maintain. He rested his head back onto the pads of the pelican's seats and slept.

 **Dr Salvia Martinez, Reach**

"We're leaving" Haverson said, stepping up onto the tailgate of a Pelican dropship "We're heading to the only ship still left planetside, the _Pillar of Autumn_ , she's still docked in Esposz." He turned and looked at her, smiling slightly "Good luck Doctor, you won't need it with those Spartans looking out for you."

She smiled back, offering her hand to shake, and he took it. "You take care Lieutenant, I want to see you in the Officer's club in Bravo-6 before year's end." She smiled sadly, well aware of the unlikeliness of her wish.

He nodded, then turned further into the dropship as the door closed and the engines picked up, whipping dust into her face as she backed away into one of the Spartans.

"Ma'am, time to go." Sabina said, gesturing back towards their Warthog. The five abandoned Oliphants lay empty behind it, every wounded soldier had been loaded up and evacuated 5 minutes ago. The rest of the area was also similarly abandoned, despite it being a hub of activity a short while ago. The Army had begun its planet-wide evacuations. All were fleeing, some to Earth, some to other colonies. Reach was lost.

"Okay, let's get off this rock" She agreed, quickly settling in between the two Spartans again. "I never liked it here anyway."

 **Chief Petty Officer Jacob-209, Reach, 20 minutes later**

"How far out are we?" Jacob yelled as he thumbed the spade triggers yet again on the M41 LAAG mounted to the back of their Warthog, unleashing a hail of High Explosive Dual Purpose rounds into the pair of Ghosts trailing them. The light reconnaissance vehicles quickly fell behind, shuddering and exploding under the onslaught. The Warthog went over a bump in the gravel road and he was almost thrown off of his position, and as he struggled to keep hold of the turret, he saw a pair of Phantom dropships swoop over the distant hillsides and join the chase.

He cursed himself, they had spent too long at the Marine Evac point, ensuring the successful evacuation of every wounded man, along with Haverson and Kovic. Had they left a few minutes earlier, they could be off planet by now. The covenant was closing in. They had caught up with them just as the last transport was away, recovering remarkably quickly from the destruction of their HQ in Manassass' Municipal Park. They had decimated the first wave of attack and then fled in their one vehicle, which was only ever designed to carry three. The three Spartans plus the DOC were spilling out of the vehicle, and Sara was hanging out of the side seat, holding her sniper rifle up to her shoulder, keeping an eye out ahead. The poor Doc was sandwiched between two half-ton Spartans, looking comically small between them.

"We're 3 klicks out!" Sabina shouted from the driver's seat, wrenching the wheel around to drag the Hog's legendarily fish-tail happy back end back onto the road.

"I see two Phantoms, fast and low, can we vector for CAS?" He shouted back, keeping the chaingun spooled up and ready to fire as soon as the dropships came into range.

"Negative, the only Air Force base on this continent not currently a smoking pile of ash is McFarral, and they're under heavy bombardment. Navy birds are all tied up doing evac." She swore and jerked the Warthog to the side, narrowly avoiding the strafing plasma fire of a Banshee diving on them.

He spun the turret around and opened fire on them, crouching in his position to point the ends of the tri-barrelled gun at the lone flier, getting a few hits in before the aircraft ducked below the low hills and ridges that ran alongside the valley.

"As soon as we get there Doc, you run for the dropship, you get on board as quickly as you can." Sara said, firing her sniper rifle at the banshee as it poked above the treeline alongside them.

"O-okay" She yelled back, readying her sidearm.

The banshee broke from the cover of the foliage and soared up over them, and he winced in pain as he crouched down on the turret to bring the gun up to fire, his wounded leg protesting sharply. He span around to follow the flier, tracer rounds ripping the vehicle apart as it tumbled from the sky and detonated in a blue fireball.

"Good shooting Jay!" Sabina approved and they began to climb the steep road draped on the side of the hill. At the top, an ONI Owl stealth dropship, essentially a smaller version of the Pelican, was waiting to break atmosphere and get the Doc off planet, hopefully to the ONI sloop docked at Station Gamma, the _Circumference_.

The moment of elation as the banshee burned was quickly overcast by the appearance of a column of Wraiths on the horizon, speeding towards them. He even spotted a specialist Anti-Air model, bristling with Fuel-Rod weaponry. The Covenant were really throwing everything they had at them.

"Enemy Anti-Air, 6 o'clock!" He called out.

"Enemy Dropships high 11!" Sara shouted simultaneously, and he wheeled around to see a dozen or more Phantoms and Spirits in the distance. They were vastly outnumbered.

Sabina spat some Russian curses as they fishtailed around to follow the gravel path upwards to the extraction point.

"Spooky 2-8, this is Siera-209, we are one klick out and expecting company, how copy?" He broadcast as the net of covenant drew around them.

"Sierra-209, this is Spooky 2-8, we copy loud and clear, engine's warm and ready for a hot exfil. Skies aren't looking too clear, but we're ready." The Pilot's voice seemed calm enough, but Jake knew that this exfiltration was going to be a tough one, even for him.

"Roger that." He confirmed, opening fire at a ghost that had caught up with them, wincing as a bolt of plasma washed over his shields, draining them. Another bolt clipped the Hog's bodywork, melting though armour leaving a glowing red mark.

The whine of impulse drives drew louder as they ascended, and a whole flight of banshees crested the horizon to the south, bearing down on them.

"Holy shit" Sara whispered softly, real fear creeping into her voice. He spun his head around to face the threat; he couldn't quite make out what it was at first, but years of training and experience helped him fill in the blanks about the enormous storm to the east. It wasn't a storm. It was a 6 kilometre long Assault Carrier, descending through the cloud layer, its curved silhouette dragging wispy vapour with it like a shroud of invisibility.

"Step on it Sab" He warned as they crested the hill and began the last mad dash along a narrow hilltop towards the meadow in which he could see the matte-grey Owl, engines running, causing ripples in the long grass due to the downdraught.

In no time they were there, Sabina and the Doctor already sprinting towards the open bay of the Owl as he and Sara jumped down from the Hog and ran towards it. His heart pounded and his breath was ragged in his ears. Doc and Sab were already inside. They were almost there. Then it all went wrong.

"Banshee!" The pilot screamed, and he whipped his head around to see the green glow of a banshee round speeding towards them. The Owl's engine screeched as the craft evaded the round, tumbling off of the cliff in front of it in its efforts. Suddenly he and Sara were alone in the open with no dropship, no cover in sight. Easy targets. Another banshee came in for an attack run.

She didn't say anything. He had no warning. One instant he was staring down a Banshee, firing into its centre mass with his rifle, watching as the fighter let loose a glowing green fuel rod round at him. No escape. The next he was on his side on the ground, his weapon tumbling over the cliff edge as he skidded precariously close to the precipice. He didn't even have time to gather his senses before the green missile impacted where he had just been, sending him tumbling further away.

His blood ran cold. She had pushed him out of the way. Sara. No. He scrambled to his feet, spinning in the dust cloud, trying to find her. He couldn't see a thing, the explosion had thrown so much dust up into the air, that he couldn't even see his hands before him. His helmet bleeped at him, showing catastrophic damage to the shield generator and motion sensor modules. He shut them off.

"SARA!" He bellowed, a raw animal cry of pain. He stumbled around, trying to find her. His ribs ached, his leg was on fire, but that didn't matter.

His foot hit something hard as he walked. It was her. He fell to his knees and tried to clear some of the soil off of her. She was limp and lifeless, her armour battered. The shield generator must've been broken, because no shimmering layer of energy stopped him from lightly touching her mangled leg. The armour had been completely melted away, exposing charred flesh and bone, held on by only sinew.

Dread tied knots in his guts. He couldn't breathe. The war stopped. The chaos and destruction all around him stopped for a brief moment. Everything else fell away into the background.

She looked almost peaceful. He numbly checked her vital signs, noting that she still had a pulse. There was little emotion to his actions, he was just following his training. Almost as if he had taken a back seat and let the Spartan in him take over. Not quite in control, but still looking through his eyes.

The dust and smoke was whipped away as the Owl wobbled back over the cliff and spun around, and he picked her up in his arms, letting her eviscerated limb fall back to the ground as he walked briskly over to the back door of the dropship and laid her down. The rear doors slid shut and he felt the g-forces tug at him as the pilot shot away from the covenant fighters. He took a more thorough look at her.

She looked like a broken doll, a child's plaything discarded to the side of the road. Her leg was missing entirely, and most of the arm on the same side of the body was a blackened twisted mess. He knelt down beside her and slowly removed her helmet, staring down into her brown eyes as they stared back, wide and scared.

He vaguely became aware that Sab was doing something on Sara's other side, but he didn't really care. She was shouting something in his ear, her movements sluggish. But all he really saw was Sara. She was mouthing something slowly but he couldn't understand, part of her mouth was burned, blackened as much as her helmet.

He took off his helmet and dropped it weakly at his side, steadying himself against the strong evasive manoeuvres the dropship was performing. He felt none of them.

"What is it?" He asked her, leaning down to better hear her.

Her voice was hoarse and weak. He could hear her skin crackling as she moved her lips to from the words. The pain must've been unendurable.

"I'm. S-sorry" She croaked, her breaths wheezing, her face contorted in pain.

Sab worked on her furiously, grabbing her good hand and clenching it. "No need Sara, just hang in there, just stay with us."

Sara snorted, punctuated by fresh wheezes of agony. She looked into his eyes, jerking her head slightly to signal him to come closer. He lowered his ear to her mouth, still in a trance.

"You have to go on. She won't make it without you." She gasped, coughing and choking in between words. He knew that her lungs were filling up with blood. "I've always loved her."

He turned to look into her eyes again, and all traces of pain were gone from them. Just calm acceptance. "It's been an honour" He croaked.

She nodded, and started to speak, urging him to re-lower his head to hear her. "Don't ever tell her."

He nodded. Sab would never be able to forget the information. It would weigh down on her. So he had to bear the weight. And he would until the day he died.

She shuddered, breathing slow and shallow now, eyes defocussed. "Thank you." She whispered one last time before her mouth fell slack and her hand slipped out of Sabina's grasp. Her head rolled to one side, dripping blood from her lips.

Sabina worked on her all the way through the 3 minute remainder of the flight, pumping fluids and aspirating her airway. He followed the protocol too, but he wasn't really there. He barely noticed when they docked with an ONI Corvette and she was hastily wheeled away by a team of medical personnel. He just sat there in the Owl's crew bay inside the corvette's docking bay as the ship started the escape from Reach, jumping into Slip-Space as the planet fell. The floor of the bay was stained a dark red.

"I'm sorry Spartan." Suddenly Martinez was sitting right next to him. He hadn't detected her come in. "They called it 4 minutes ago."

He looked around at her. "How long have we been on board?"

"Four hours. Are you okay?" She asked, looking worried.

"I'm fine." He lied "And you don't need to be sorry Doc. It should have been me."

She cleared her throat and stared at the opposite wall. "There's an old 20th Century poem that I like to think of in times like these. Really helped me when my Dad died. Would you like to hear it?"

He said nothing, so she proceeded:

"The Art of Losing isn't hard to master,

So many things seem filled with the intent to be lost,

That their loss is no disaster."

He smiled weakly, recognising the familiar prose. "One Art. Elizabeth Bishop, 1975. I know it."

She raised an eyebrow "A Spartan who knows ancient poetry. Now I've seen everything."

"It was my mother's favourite" He whispered, latching on to the only memory he had of his parent. He looked around wearily, clearing his throat "Where's my helmet, I need to do something."

She leaned down under the seats and picked it up, handing it to him. He slipped it around his ears and silenced the alarms and klaxons that had activated as soon as she had flat lined. He opened up the mission roster and moved Sara-170from "Active" to "Missing In Action."

"Thank you Doctor, if you'll excuse me." He said, standing up and saluting the ONI attaché.

"Of course. She's in the infirmary. I need to report to the bridge anyway, Admiral Walker is expecting me." She walked past him, pausing to give him a squeeze of the arm as she went.

He marched through the corridors of the corvette to the infirmary and found the room completely empty apart from Sabina, who was slumped down in a seat at the far end of the room, helmet off and hair let down from its bun. He guessed that she'd been there for some time, because the motion-activated lights flickered back on as he walked up to her and joined her in staring out of the window and the eerie blackness of slip-space.

It was 10 minutes before he broke the silence, taking off his helmet and sighing. "You know what Chief Mendez would say in this situation?"

She shook her head "Probably some ball-busting quip ending with a heartfelt sentiment."

He smiled sadly "You're probably right, but I'd bet on him using the whole "Spending lives versus wasting lives" spiel"

"This was a waste." She growled, standing up and pacing around the room. "We never should have been sent on this fucking mission. Where was out CAS or orbital support?"

"Sab, there was none left, we did what we co-"

"Don't you dare finish that fucking sentence." She shouted. He heard crashing behind him and swivelled to see Sab overturning the gurneys and punching bio-monitors, sending sparks flying and bits of circuit board everywhere.

"It's not fair." She spat as she kicked the remnants of the machine across the room, howling in anguish.

He stood up and grabbed her by the arm, and she rounded on him, raising her hand to strike him before freezing, her eyes filled with tears. He stood his ground, and she slowly lowered her fist, upon which she fell to her knees, openly sobbing. He fell with her, wrapping her in his arms, blinking tears out of his own eyes.

"Easy, easy, I'm here" He softly whispered as they sat there in the middle of the room. He'd never seen her like this. The loss of Sara was not enough for this. But he felt her pain. They were safe, travelling back to Earth faster than the speed of light, but Reach, their home, was gone. Who knows what happened to the other Spartans. He was filled with hopelessness and sorrow, an all-consuming wave of blackness creeping up from the depths of his soul.

"They wouldn't even let me see her body" She whispered once the tears had subsided. "Straight to cryo"

He just nodded "We'll deal with this. We have to. There's still a war to fight."

"I know." She sighed, closing her eyes.

He exhaled, realising how physically and mentally exhausted he was. 48 hours of active combat were wearing him down. He smiled sadly and mumbled the end lines of the Doctor's poem

"Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love0,

I shan't have lied,

It's evident that the art of losing's not too hard to master.

Even if it looks like (Write it.) Disaster."

He finished, yawning and tapped on Sabina's shoulder. "Come on, can't sleep here, let's go."

Tomorrow they would fight. They would fight on against the eternal enemy until their dying moments, and with Martinez' efforts, maybe they would be one step closer to winning. But today was not that day. They would rest, mourn, and prepare for the upcoming battle. After all, the art of losing's not too hard to master.


End file.
